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A BETTER WORLD 
TYLER DENNETT 



A BETTER WORLD 



BY 

TYLER DENNETT 

FELLOW OF THE AMERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY 
AUTHOR OF "the DEMOCRATIC MOVE- 
MENT IN ASIA," ETC. 




NEW ^^9S^ YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 






COPYRIGHT, 1920, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



APR 2 1 1S20 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



©CU56690? 



FOREWORD 

As these words are written, it is yet doubtful 
whether the United States is to enter the League 
of Nations or not. The decision is not impor- 
tant to the argument of the following pages. 

The world becomes neither better nor worse by 
the mere setting up of any political institution. 
Surely the time is here when mankind is weary 
of legalistic debate and quibbling phrases. A bet- 
ter world does not hang on a word or phrase of 
law but on a better public opinion. 

Back of all this tiresome disputation is the 
blunt question, sp often overlooked in the debate, 
as to the present moral and spiritual resources of 
mankind for peaceful, cooperative living. This is 
the question which we cannot dodge or hide from, 
and even though the League of Nations were func- 
tioning in full panoplied power, the quality of 
the public opinion supporting it would be the ab- 
solutely fundamental question to which we ought 
to address ourselves. 

The so-called Christian nations are approach- 
ing moral and spiritual bankruptcy as is clearly 
revealed by the apathy of public opinion on the 
great moral issues which underlie the Treaty and 
the League. While the Christian people of the 



vi FOEEWORD 

world do not think straight and feel straight on 
moral questions, there is small chance that any 
political institution will function righteously. 

The moral foundations of the world have not 
been shaken because the Treaty and the League 
are not received with more joyous acclaim. On 
the contrary, the actions of the Peace Conference 
were what they were because the moral founda- 
tions of the world have not yet been established. 

Nowhere has the doctrine of laissez faire been 
so thoroughly discredited as in the matter of re- 
ligion. Religious faith is as much subject to con- 
scious direction, change and improvement as any 
intellectual, political or industrial condition. 
This book, therefore, argues boldly and without 
evasion that the day is already here when the 
Christian peoples of the earth must, in self-de- 
fense if for no nobler motive, definitely set before 
themselves the task of bringing all mankind, 
themselves included, to the acceptance and prac- 
tice of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I The Unfinished Task 13 

II The League and a Changing World . . 39 

III Christianity, Democracy, and Interna- 

tionalism 66 

IV Europe, the V/ar, and Religion ... 89 
V Christianity and the Non-Christian Races 111 

VI Christianity and the Next Century . . 135 

VII The New Patriotism 154 



mi 



A BETTER WORLD 



S 




A BETTER WORLD 

CHAPTER I 
THE UNFINISHED TASK 

I 

THE SPIKITUAIj PICTUKESQUENESS OF THE PEACE CON- 
FERENCE 

*^A LIVING thing is born in this document/' said 
President Wilson in quiet, level tones, in the few 
remarks with which he concluded the reading of 
the first draft of the covenant of the League of 
Nations. 

"Here, sitting around these tables, are dele- 
gates of fourteen States,'' he said, "and I have 
calculated that we represent more than twelve 
hundred millions of people. When you think of 
the variety of circumstances among these four- 
teen nationalities there is great significance in the 
fact that we have reached a unanimous result." 

' ' Armed force is in the background in this con- 
stitution," continued President Wilson. "If the 
moral force of the world will not suffice, physical 
force shall, but only as a last resource." 

13 



14 A BETTEE WOELD 

An American correspondent, in one of those 
dull days of the early part of the Peace Confer- 
ence when news was scanty, sat down and dashed 
off a dispatch which was published under the cap- 
tion: ^*Why is the Peace Conference not Im- 
pressive?" It was a most amazing question. 
True, the Peace Conference did not contain much 
gold lace, not much pomp and circumstance, but 
man alive! the Peace Conference was the most 
spectacular, the most spiritually spectacular, con- 
ference which was ever staged in the history of the 
world. 

''The arrangement of the tables,'' wrote the 
correspondent, ''suggests a luncheon for some 
sixty or seventy business men, except that in place 
of the linen and dishes and silverware the tables 
are covered with green cloth and there are writing 
pads and racks for stationery. There is a head 
table from which two long side tables project the 
length of the room, leaving a well in the center. 
Every minute it seems as if the waiters ought to 
come trooping in with the oysters." 

But think who were seated at those tables, dele- 
gates from Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, British Em- 
pire including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, 
South Africa and India, China, Cuba, Czecho- 
slovakia, Equador, France, Greece, Guatemala, 
Haiti, Hedjaz, Honduras, Italy, Japan, Liberia, 
Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Poland, Portugal, 
Eumania, Serbia, Siam, and Uruguay, as well as 
the United States. 



THE UNFINISHED TASK 15 

Or, to view it less from a national and more 
Tom a racial point of view, where before in the 
'listory of the world did you ever see the legally 
accredited representatives of the government of 
;he black man, the brown man, the yellow man and 
he white man all sitting down in conference to- 
i^ether with their feet under the same table ? The 
?eace Conference was spiritually the most pictur- 
esque assembly which was ever staged. It was 
vorth all that it cost just to put it up before the 
(yes of the world. 

The Peace Conference, and the proposed 
^eague of Nations, was more than a conference: 
t was a symbol, it is a symbol, of the hopes and 
ispirations of the world. 

We may make a legitimate distinction between 
he object which we are viewing, the Conference, 
ind the symbolism which attaches to it. Objects 
s symbols are chiefly to be judged by what they 
uggest to the imagination. In themselves they 
aay be even crude and ugly, as a tawdry and bat- 
ered crucifix, and yet they may speak to the soul 
-nd stir the heart to purposes sublime and ex- 
[uisitely beautiful. Thus may be judged the Peace 
inference. To those who grubbed around in the 
auck and dirt of a Paris winter, encountering day 
ly day all the unlovely and despicable traits that 
Luman flesh is heir to, the Conference was often 
[isillusioning, disappointing, heart-breaking; and 
^et the symbolism remains. All that the Peace 
Conference promised to be, and hoped to be, but 



16 A BETTEE WOELD 

failed to be, the world may yet become — yes, must 
become, if civilization is not to destroy itself. 

A living thing was born, a visible symbol of a 
democracy which shall be not merely nation wide 
and nation deep, but international, yes, and even' 
inter-racial. Inadequate and disappointing as it 
was, the Peace Conference approached more 
nearly than the world has yet seen to being the 
visible political sign of the Kingdom of God. That 
it did not come nearer only shows ns how far the 
world is still removed from that ideal of which 
the ancient prophets dreamed and of which the 
Master spoke. 

We shall never have a better Peace Conference, 
or a better League of Nations, until we have a 
better world. 

DEFICIENCY OF IDEALISM 

It is easy to criticize the Peace Conference, the 
Treaty of Peace and the League of Nations. It 
is particularly easy to criticize on the basis of 
wrong presuppositions. 

*^I must say," said President Wilson in his 
Metropolitan Opera House speech, in March, just 
before returning to Paris, 'Hhat I have been 
puzzled by some of the criticisms — not by the 
criticisms themselves : I can understand them per- 
fectly, even when there was no foundation for 
them — but by the fact of the criticism. I cannot 
imagine how these gentlemen can live and not live 



THE UNFINISHED TASK 17 

in the atmosphere of the world. I particularly 
can not imagine how they can be Americans and 
set up a doctrine of careful selfishness, thought 
out to the last detail. I have heard no counsel of 
generosity in their criticism: I have heard no 
constructive suggestion. I have heard nothing ex- 
cept, ^^Will it not be dangerous to us to help the 
world r' 

But it is easy, especially easy without the facts 
which reveal the choices that were presented in 
Paris, to criticize on the constructive side, to 
measure the work of the Paris conference by a 
moral ideal of absolute justice, and to find both 
Treaty and League very deficient. Such criticism 
should not be discouraged. It would indeed be de- 
plorable if the world were now to settle down and 
assume that the Treaty of Peace has taken the 
place of the Bible, and the League of Nations is 
a school of the prophets. 

The embarrassments which faced the Peace 
Conference were of three kinds. It was of the ut- 
most importance, first of all, to lay down as a 
base-line a moral ideal according to which the new 
world should be built. Secondly, it was necessary 
to gain the assent of the nations to those princi- 
ples. Thirdly, the military, geographical, politi- 
cal and economic terms of the treaty must be 
fixed. 

*^What we seek is the reign of law based upoK 
the consent of the governed, and sustained by the 
organized opinion of mankind,'' said President 



18 A BETTER WORLD 

Wilson. This, in its simplest form, was tlie base- 
line. It was, so far as the ^^Big Powers" were 
concerned, exclusively an American contribution, 
for no other one of them came to Paris either will- 
ing or free to accept it. The opinion of mankind 
was not organized and it had meager representa- 
tion at the Peace Table. The ideal was not ac- 
cepted in its integrity. In the resulting treaty it 
is therefore difficult to recognize any underlying 
<;onsistent, moral principle. 

It is barely possible that more of the principle 
of ^* consent of the governed," the moral ideal of 
democracy, might have been imposed upon the 
Peace Conference, and through it upon the world, 
if sufficient force had been applied. But the ap- 
plication of that force, in itself, would have been 
an even greater transgression of morality than 
any of the compromises which were adopted. A 
moral ideal is violated and vitiated when it is im- 
posed upon those unwilling to accept it. 

Democracy does not begin at the top and work 
down. It works up from the bottom or it does not 
work at all. 

The unfinished task of the peace is the transcend- 
ing moral task of organizing the opinion of man- 
kind in support of a world social order which 
rests on the consent of the governed. This is es- 
sentially a religious task, the Christianizing of the 
world order. 

^^Thus it comes back," writes Herbert Croly of 
the New Republic in an article on The Obstacle to 



THE UNFINISHED TASK 19 

Peace (April 26, 1919), **to the amount of idealism 
wMch the democratic peoples bring to the new 
task. . . . The richest source of the needed 
ideology is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The west- 
em democracies have ahead of them a perfectly 
plain although an extremely difficult task. They 
have to stop dogmatizing about Christianity and 
to stop practicing it merely as a vehicle of per- 
sonal salvation. They have to begin the im- 
mediate application of it to the anarchy produced 
in their own moral sanctuary by the existing dis- 
tribution of industrial and political power. 

**In its social aspect Christianity consists, first, 
in the repentant recognition by Christians of the 
sin of their past bondage to selfish preoccupations, 
and secondly, in their redemption not by enforc- 
ing penalties for breaking the law but by active 
faith in the inexhaustible possibility of human de- 
liverance and regeneration. The practice of such 
a belief in human nature will create the Great 
Society which can heal the wounds and repair the 
losses of the war. After their prolonged recent in- 
dulgence in the morality of taking a life for a life, 
the salvation of the western peoples can only 
come from a great outburst of humanism. They 
can no longer meet their needs with the rule of 
live and let live upon which liberal capitalism of 
the Victorian era prided itself. They must reach 
towards the peremptory gospel of human brother- 
hood which demands here and now that we live in 
order to enhance life.'' The Peace Conference 



20 A BETTER WORLD 

was embarrassed by a deficiency of that sort of 
idealism. 

Ill 

THE PKEACHING AlTD PEACTICE OF WAR SLOGANS 

The war was the most colossal vindication of 
Christian ethics which the world has ever seen. 
It demonstrated again that we cannot violate the 
moral law without suffering the penalties. We 
cannot be even a silent and inactive member of 
a group which violates the law and expect that 
when the punishment falls upon the group we 
can be spared. The largest group to which, we 
belong is mankind, and no one escapes individual 
responsibility even for the sins of that largest 
group. Everyone is called on to bear his part 
of the penalty. Thus, if in no other way, are we 
compelled to recognize our widest social re- 
sponsibilities. If the war has not taught us to 
stand in awe and reverence before the great truth 
that we must live in order to enhance life, then 
are we miserable indeed. Ours is the unpardon- 
able sin of being unwilling to learn. No military 
measures in the future, as in the past, are ade- 
quate to defend us from the penalties which are | 
visited upon those who ignore their social re- 
sponsibility. 

Even the most loyal defenders of the Peace 
Conference would not attempt to argue that every 
nation represented there was content to take the 
lowest seat until it was urged to come up higher, 



THE UNFINISHED TASK 21 

nor did any nation appear in Paris as esteeming 
others better than itself. The idea of a nation 
at the service of the world, a servant in the human 
brotherhood, eager to confer favors, regardless of 
receiving them, was jeered at. 

And yet, it is very doubtful whether the war 
could have been won without that great appeal to 
the Christian ideal which was voiced so often by 
President Wilson. We know perfectly well that 
the American people would have repudiated the 
cause of the Allies even as they judged the cause 
of the Central Powers if, instead of appealing to 
the American people l;o save democracy. President 
Wilson had asked us to send ^ye million men to 
Europe to add one acre of territory to any im- 
perial domain in Europe, Africa, or Asia. It is 
even questionable whether Italy, France and Eng- 
land could have kept their soldiers in the trenches 
through the year of 1917 if the governments had 
published their secret treaties or made an honest 
statement of their war aims with reference to 
Eussia, China, Africa, Asia Minor, and certain 
parts of Eastern Europe. 

The world is now faced with the gravest of 
moral crises. The peoples of the world were 
deeply stirred to moral earnestness and to action. 
The Peace Conference, a conference of govern- 
ments, repudiated the application of the prin- 
ciples to which the peoples of the world had given 
their assent. On the one hand governments 
themselves stand convicted before their own peo- 



22 A BETTER WORLD 

pies, and on the other hand stand revealed as 
disqualified for moral leadership before that two 
thirds of the world, eight or nine hundred millions 
of people, whose rights to consent in their own 
government were all but ignored. 

The crisis is the more grave because of the fact 
that the appeals of President Wilson will not soon 
be forgotten by the peoples who accepted them 
and if history teaches us anything it is that the 
will of the people cannot be thwarted eternally, i 
If the Treaty of Peace is the best and the last 
word which existing governments have to offer on 
the consent of the governed, racial equality, the 
color question and the rights of weak nations and 
races, then the question of government itself is 
up for discussion and even the wildest anarchist 
may always be sure of a most attentive audience. 
The general *' Social Revolution'' may be post- 
poned a year or even five years in Europe and the 
race war may not come for fifty years or even for 
a century but Christian faith and Christian culture 
are doomed. 

Fortunately the last word on moral questions 
is not delivered by governments or by diplomatic 
representatives. It comes from the people, and 
the people of the world have not repudiated the 
moral ideal of Christian liberty or the kindred 
ideal of Christian democracy. It is safe to say 
that these ideals never claimed so many adherents 
as they do today. The unfinished task of the war 



THE UNFINISHED TASK 23 

is to organize and extend the number of believers 
until their will becomes the law. 

And what is this task but that of Christian 
discipleship, the application of the Gospel of Jesus 
Christ, the extension of it, and then the applica- 
tion and extension of it again, until it includes 
under its righteous and peaceful sway the entire 
world? 

The slogans under which the war was fought 
and won, ^ ' The defense of weak nations, " ^ ^ respect 
for treaties,'' ^'Government by consent of the 
governed,'' ''autocracy must go," and "make the 
world safe for democracy" aroused many hopes 
in the hearts of mankind which the Treaty of 
Peace did not fulfil. They were legitimate hopes, 
too, and these unfulfilled yet legitimate hopes of 
mankind bound the unfinished task which is upon 
us. The greatest question before the world is 
not how much Germany will pay, but rather how 
much these nations and races and social classes 
which were so little represented at Paris will have 
to pay. And for what they do have to pay, these 
backward, ignorant, unrepresented, oppressed 
peoples, the "under dogs" of the world, will they 
get value received? 

IV 

liberty's frightful, mien 

Angel Eye-lash made a speech in Barcelona one 
night in December just as the delegates were 
hurrying across the world to form the Peace Con- 



24 A BETTEE WOELD 

f erenee. Angel Eye-lash, or to leave the name un- 
translated Angel Pestana, is not less picturesque 
than his name would indicate. He is a Spanish 
anarchist. Addressing a group of kindred spirits 
in one of the Liberal Clubs with which Spain is 
generously supplied, he demanded, working up to 
an impassioned climax: ^^Why are our children 
not permitted to sit down at the feast of the good 
things of life!" Everyone waited, breathlessly 
wondering how he would define the ' 'good things" 
of life. Would they be diamonds, wine and auto- 
mobiles? No. He continued: ''We want for our 
children the schools, the art and the music which 
now only the rich people enjoy. ' ' 

A woman in the Casa del Pueblo (Peoples' 
House: the Madrid Socialist Headquarters) was 
asked what the women of Madrid desired most. 
She replied: "Education for the girls and day- 
nurseries where we may leave our babies when we 
go out to work." Not a very revolutionary re- 
quest it would seem, but a few days later, when 
the bread-shop riots broke out in Madrid, she was 
not only one of the first to reach the center of the 
disorder but later proudly boasted that although 
most of the looting was very conservative the sol- 
diers had to call out the fire department to stop 
the fires that she set. 

A few weeks later I was interviewing a group 
of radical leaders in Barcelona, seeking to dis- 
cover whether there is any likelihood that the 
numerous liberal parties, now largely local and 



THE UNFINISHED TASK 25 

quite separated in their leadership and aims, 
would unite on any single moderate program of 
reform such as the establishment of a republic. 
They were only mildly interested. ^^Of course,'' 
they said, ^^we would favor a republic, although 
we would not expect much from it. We would 
husband our energies, try to get as much out of 
the change as we could ; but we are really waiting 
for the Social Eevolution to begin." 

^^And when do you expect the Social Eevolu- 
tion T' I asked. 

*^ Within three or four years. It will probably 
start in either Italy or France. Then we shall 
join it. It would be useless for Spain to start the 
Social Revolution now, for the forces of the 
League of Nations would be immediately mobilized 
against us and we would be crushed." 

Sehor Maura, recently Premier, the chairman 
of the Spanish Commission appointed by the gov- 
ernment to study the idea of the League of Na- 
tions, included in his official report a reconnnenda- 
tion that Spain increase the size of her army. This 
fact was offered to me by one of the very mod- 
erate leaders of Spain as an evidence that ^Hhe 
ruling classes of Spain are still living in the Mid- 
dle Ages. ' ' Then he added : * ^ No one knows when 
the change will come, but come it will. The 
merchants and the laboring classes have not failed 
to note what is passing in the world north of the 
Pyrenees. ' ' 

In every country where misgovemment is en- 



26 A BETTEE WOELD 

throned and where the masses of the people are 
denied the right of self-expression and seK-de- 
termination you will find similar groups of peo- 
ple, the intensity of whose convictions vary di- 
rectly with the degree of their poverty, the un- 
equal distribution of wealth and the rigor of mili- 
tary control. ! 

It is interesting to see that this demand for 
self-determination has already invaded Japan, a 
country which until very recently has been closed 
to such ideas. * * It is inevitable that Japan should 
be a:ffected by the world-wide tide of liberalism, 
but I hope that a critical situation can be averted 
by granting the people universal suffrage — ^for 
the men, that is — and improving the condition of 
the laboring classes." Thus speaks Yukio Ozaki, 
formerly Japanese Minister of Justice and also 
former mayor of Tokio, as quoted by the New 
York Evening Post, April 18, 1919. The dis- 
tinguished speaker is also reported as being dis- 
appointed over the fact that the Japanese Diet, 
which recently reduced the property and tax 
qualifications so that the number of voters is 
about doubled, did not increase the extent of 
suffrage very much more. He reported that un- 
dercurrents of Socialism and labor agitation are 
appearing in Japan. 

It was perhaps such facts as one can gather in 
Spain, or Italy, or Japan, or even in France, that 
President Wilson had in mind when he spoke of 
'* economic serfdom" and when he wondered 



THE UNFINISHED TASK 27 

where some of the leaders of American public 
opinion have been living that they do not under- 
stand what the masses are thinking and what they 
are demanding for the new world which has been 
promised. 

The League of Nations, in creating machinery 
to prevent the outbreak of war between states, cre- 
ates machinery which could be used also, so far as 
armies can be controlled, to prevent the outbreak 
of this new war against economic serfdom. 

This is one of the grave questions arising out 
of the deliberations and action of the Peace Con- 
ference. The world longs for peace ; those of us 
who are not hungry, whose children are not de- 
prived of the **good things of life," who share 
the privileges which the rich enjoy, incline to feel 
that peace is a supreme consideration. But if this 
general war-weariness, this yearning for peace, 
are the very trenches behind which feudalism 
seeks to protect itself, if the maintenance of 
peace means also the sustaining of an unrighteous 
social order in Europe for Bourbons who ^^ never 
learn,'' how then shall we vote to utilize the 
League of Nations, or what measures shall we 
consent to its employing^ 

The war against the Central Powers was 
sustained year after year, and was won after the 
most persistent appeals to democracy and ex- 
plicit promises repeated over and over again that 
democracy must win. Now that the war has been 
won the common people have discovered that 



28 A BETTER WORLD 

autocracy was not confined to Germany, even as 
the governments have discovered that Bolshevism 
cannot be confined to Russia. 

As a direct result of the appeal which was made 
to democracy new hopes and aspirations were born 
in every country in the world. But Liberty, as 
she comes nearer, proves to wear a terrifying 
mien. We draw back in alarm. We have granted 
the premises : we hardly dare draw the conclusion. 
We tremble before the fact that the world is not 
yet prepared for the liberty which is promised. 
This is the first disillusionment and the first chal- 
lenge. 

V 

THE EIGHTS OF WEAK NATIONS 

But the democratic aspirations stimulated by 
the war are not confined to the internal economic 
and political concerns of individual states of 
either Europe or Asia. There has been an un- 
paralleled resurrection of the spirit of nationality 
and a demand for the recognition of what may be 
called the democracy of nationalities. This de- 
mand, like the voice of the depressed masses of 
Europe, comes from the bottom. The little 
nationalities, the weak and forgotten ones, demand 
democratic liberties in the world by the side of 
the master nations. 

*^Ten new States have sprung into existence," 
reported Lloyd George, toward the end of the 
Peace Conference. ^'Some of them are inde- 



THE UNFINISHED TASK 29 

pendent, some of them are dependent, some of 
them may be protectorates; and, at any rate, al- 
though we may not define their boundaries, we 
must give indications of them. Boundaries of 
fourteen countries will have to be recast/' But 
this enumeration by no means gives adequate in- 
dication of the extent of the problem, such a large 
part of which was not made the concern of the 
Peace Conference at all. 

The Koreans, having waited a dozen years for 
a favorable opportunity, have now appealed their 
case to the court of the world. *^For ten years 
we have been oppressed by a militaristic and im- 
perialistic Government. With no more right than 
Germany when she crushed Belgium under her 
heel and brought down upon herself the condem- 
nation of Christendom, the Japanese Government 
has not only robbed us of our national liberty, 
but has deprived us of those rights which were the 
heritage of every human being. It has deprived 
us of justice, of freedom of thought, of our lan- 
guage, of the right to educate our children accord- 
ing to our ideals, imposing upon us a system of 
education destructive not only of our national 
ideals, but imperilling the very foundations of the 
Christian religion." Thus runs the appeal. 

One of the most notable features of the Korean 
outbreak has been the outspoken Japanese dis- 
approval, voiced not only in America but in Japan, 
of the prevailing policy in Chosen. Yukio Ozaki 
stated in the interview quoted above that ^*the 



30 A BETTEE WOELD 

cause of the revolution, if it may be so called, is 
another instance of the evils of military control 
in Japanese affairs. The Governor-Generals of 
Korea, as well as of Formosa, always have been 
military men. Men from civil life have been given 
little opportunity in colonial control and the na- 
tives have resented it. It is time, too, that the 
Koreans be given a stronger voice in their Gov- 
ernment." The immediate initiation of reforms 
in Korea which have followed the exposure of the 
situation is still further proof of vitality of the 
new democratic movement in Asia. In Japan, I 
have heard distinguished citizens argue earnestly 
that Japan ought to relinquish entirely the con- 
trol of Korea even as the United States has prom- 
ised to relinquish control in the Philippines, al- 
though the speakers dropped their voices and 
spoke hardly above a whisper when they expressed 
such convictions. But that was several years ago. 
'* What right have the Japanese to look down upon 
the Koreans r^ they asked, contemptuously. 

Within two months after the first draft of the 
Covenant of the League of Nations was published 
the Nationalists of Egypt were throwing vitriol, 
and the same day we read of Indian riots in 
Amritsar being quelled from the sky by aero- 
planes. It is crude, criminal stupidity to think 
that such movements can be dismissed from atten- 
tion under the general term Bolshevism, and it is 
equally crude to drive them underground by 
bringing out the machine-guns. 



THE UNFINISHED TASK 31 

Yet, we again find ourselves facing the fact that 
the granting of all the unrestricted liberties and 
freedoms which may logically be deduced from a 
doctrine of national self-determination would not 
enthrone liberty and would extend a frightful 
chaos. Koreans must admit that the alleged mis- 
government of Korea by Japan represents an im- 
measurable improvement over the misgovernment 
which Korea administered to herself before the 
Japanese annexation. The demand of the radicals 
of India for absolute self-government, even within 
the Empire, will not stand examination as a meas- 
ure likely to increase either justice or happiness 
among the vast and ununified millions of India. 

The world is ill prepared for uncompromising 
democracy. It would be hardly more successful 
in many places than in a kindergarten. 

VI 

THE INTEBNATIOFAL COLOK-LINB 

Another sore spot in the Peace Conference was 
the color question. 

The Pan- African Congress, the first, I suppose, 
in the history of the world, held a three-day session 
in Paris during the second month of the peace de- 
liberations. Its presiding officer was M. Diagne, 
Senegalese representative in the French Chamber 
of Deputies. Prof. W. E. B. Du Bois was the lead- 
ing representative from the United States. The 
resolutions which were adopted bear in every line 



32 A BETTER WORLD 

the marks of the inspiration and hope which have 
come to the colored peoples because of the war 
and because of their participation in it. The Con- 
gress was agreed that the condition of the black 
race in America is far more serious than in any- 
other country. Not much ground for American 
pride in that ! But the resolutions bearing on the 
relation of the subject black races to the govern- 
ments over them are worth recording as the first 
Negro Declaration of Rights : ? 

''The Governments of the Allied Powers and 
their associates ought to establish a law of inter- 
national protection for the natives, as they estab- 
lish an international law for the working world. 

''In the League of Nations a permanent secre- 
tary's office ought to be engaged, especially with 
the political, social and economic measures which 
comprise the status of the natives. The negroes 
of the world demand that henceforth the natives 
of Africa and the people of African origin shall 
be governed according to the following principles, 
wherever they are not already applied: 

^* Lands: the soil and the natural resources shall 
be reserved and safeguarded for the natives. 
Ownership of the land shall be extended to those 
who are able to improve it. 

'^Capital: the law of concessions must be regu- 
lated so as to prevent the exploitation of the na- 
tives, and the draining of the natural riches of 
the country. These concessions, which must al- 
ways be temporary, must function under the con- 



THE UNFINISHED TASK 33 

trol of the state. The growing needs of the na- 
tives must be considered. A portion of the profits 
from the concessions must be nsed for the moral 
, and material welfare of the natives. 

^^ Labor: abolition of slavery and of corporal 
punishment: abolition of forced labor except in 
the cases of punishment for crimes ; promulgation 
of labor laws. 

^'Education: all native children must be in^ 
structed, not only in their mother tongue, but also 
in the language of the protecting nation. There 
must be professionally qualified teachers. 

^^ Medical assistance and hygiene: it should be 
recognized that human life in the tropics requires 
special safeguards as well as a system of public 
scientific hygiene. The states should be held re- 
sponsible for the care and the sanitary conditions 
without decreasing the initiative of missionary 
societies and of individuals. A service of medical 
assistance provided with doctors and hospitals 
ought to be created by the state. 

'* State: the native Africans ought to be ad- 
mitted gradually to a part in the administration 
of public aif airs, in proportion to their intellectual 
development, by virtue of the principle that gov- 
ernments exist for the people and not the people 
for the governments. ' ' 

The Pan-African Congress did not fail also to 
note that color discrimination is directed against 
the yellow as well as the black races and is there- 
fore of world-wide proportions. 



34 A BETTER WORLD 

The Peace Conference dodged the color question 
when it came to matters of legislation, although 
the covenant of the League of Nations, in the in- 
structions to mandatory nations, takes cognizance 
of the dependence of the black man. But if we are 
honest with ourselves and in our professions of 
brotherhood and democracy, must we not frankly 
look forward to the time when the black races of 
the earth shall have representatives in the League 
of Nations in proportion to their numerical 
economic and political strength? One must ad- 
mire the declaration of negro rights not only for 
the self-respect which breathes through it but also 
for its restraint. 

Just now the world is concerned with other mat- 
ters, but the day approaches when we shall recog- 
nize the color question as the fundamental inter- 
national problem of the world. The divine right 
of kings has happily passed, the divine right of 
the people is accepted, although with many 
reservations, but the divine right of the white 
man to rule the earth still remains almost un- 
challenged, save among those to whom the Al- 
mighty has given black or tinted skins. 

t 

I 
vn j 

THE FEAE OF DEMOCRACY 

The appeal to internationalism was as necessary 
to winning the war as was the appeal to de- 
mocracy. The expectation that an Allied victory 



THE UNFINISHED TASK 35 

would make possible the clearing away of national 
suspicions and distrusts, to make way for an ef- 
fective League of Nations, nerved many a man 
and nation to take up the fight and carry it on. 
The actual establishment of not merely a League 
of Allied Nations but an actual Allied Superstate 
became a matter of the simplest necessity as a 
military, political and economic measure. One of 
the big moral by-products of the war was this new 
feeling of international responsibility so studi- 
ously cultivated in every AUied country. 

But it was already apparent, even before the 
Peace Conference met, that internationalism as a 
term was fast passing into disrepute and the dif- 
ficulties in its application at the Peace table were 
insurmountable. These difficulties were of two 
kinds. 

The sudden appearance of victory immediately 
loosed the bonds of union which had kept the 
Allied nations together in an enforced inter- 
nationalism. One could see this falling apart by 
comparing the newspaper comments of the various 
countries or, better still, by talking with the sol- 
diers. Every nation began modestly to admit that 
its action had been the sole or decisive part in 
winning the war. Italians, French, British, 
Belgians and Americans alike assumed it as a mat- 
ter of course. Probably not at any time during 
the war were the various governments so far apart 
and so opposed one to another as when they 
gathered at the Peace table. Some came to Paris 



36 A BETTER WORLD 

ifirmly resolved to stand without yielding for ful- 
fillment of every pledge and the application of 
every moral principle, the enunciation of which 
had nerved the nations to victory. Others came 
with instructions from their governments which 
amounted to a repudiation of every idealistic 
policy. Under such conditions democracy even at 
the Peace Table was exposed to as many inhibi- 
tions as it is in divided, caste-blighted India. 
Thus the actual league of nations quickly reduced 
itself to an oligarchy of five nations, which in turn 
was resolved into a dictatorship of four or per- 
haps even fewer men. 

Why? The fear of democracy. 

VIII 
AN AGENCY OF PEIVILEGE 1 

The nations of the world gathered in Paris in 
no humble and contrite mood. They were morally 
quite unprepared to handle the holy issues of 
brotherhood and democracy. War breeds pride, 
revenge, cock-sureness ; it does not accomplish 
moral regeneration in individuals and least of all 
in nations. 

And yet the world owes an inestimable debt to 
the Peace Conference of 1919 for the precious 
symbolism which it did not entirely destroy. The 
League of Nations is born. The League, in spite 
of all the critics may say, offers the most effective 
organization now in view for maintaining peace 



THE UNFINISHED TASK 37 

and extending justice throughout the world. It is 
not the Kingdom of God, but the Kingdom of God 
is bom not in victory but in surrender. The moral 
regeneration of the world, of states as well as of 
men, is the unfinished task of the war, and we do 
not need to be ashamed of the jeers and jibes of 
so-called ^^practicar' men when we frankly rec- 
ognize it. 

**If the moral force of the world will not suf- 
fice, physical force shall, but only as a last re- 
source." 

But except as a most temporary make-shifty 
physical force never can suffice. 

The League of Nations may be damned on the 
ground of its parentage or it may have our con- 
fidence based on the belief that it is a ^^ living 
thing'' which will be responsive to a changing 
world. The League is the creature of those who 
framed the Treaty, and until the opinion of man- 
kind becomes more coherently organized and bet- 
ter able to express itself in representative govern- 
ment, the administration of the League will prob- 
ably remain largely in the hands of men similar 
in their conceptions of political and economic ex~ 
pediency to those who framed the Treaty. To re- 
pudiate the League, even after frankly recogniz- 
ing this danger, is, however, to vote a lack of con- 
fidence in the moral idealism or effective political 
power of the mass of citizens in America, Europe 
and Great Britain, to control their political des- 
tinies. 



38 A BETTER WORLD 

The League of Nations came into being to 
correct the confessed moral delinquencies of the 
Treaty of Versailles. It now remains for those 
portions of mankind which, by their representa- 
tives, are charged with its administration to make 
it effective, not as an agency of Privilege, which 
would thwart the growth of a changing world, but 
as a moving expression of a commonwealth of na- 
tions shaping its policies according to laws of 
justice and right. 



CHAPTER II 
THE LEAGUE AND A CHANGINa WOELD 

I 

THE LEAGUE AS A LIVING THING 

The only ground on which the League of Nations 
can claim the moral support of enlightened 
conscience, in view of the atmosphere of moral 
compromise in which it and the Treaty of Peace 
were bom, is that the League is to be the living 
thing which President Wilson called it, regarding 
both itself and the affairs of the world as moving, 
not static. 

Before outlining in later chapters how Christian 
public sentiment may vitalize the new inter- 
national relationships, we wish to indicate with 
plainness the equally great possibilities of ossifica- 
tion with which the League of Nations is threat- 
ened. 

If the League actually becomes, as some of its 
liberal critics say it will, an effort to put the final 
seal of approval upon settlements which are 
iniquitous and plainly dishonest, with a view to 
suppressing every effort to correct the mistakes 
which have been made, armed efforts if necessary; 
if the League regards itself and the world as 

39 



40 A BETTER WORLD 

static, it will not last very long. If, on the other 
hand, the League regards itself, or rather if its 
component parts regard it, as an agency the tradi- 
tions and spirit of which are yet to be established, 
it is compelled by the same logic to look both 
at home and abroad, to survey its weak founda- 
tions and immediately initiate the efforts to 
strengthen them. 

The signatories of the League of Nations are 
hardly farther apart in political, social, economic 
and religious ideals than were the original signa- 
tories of the American Declaration of Inde- 
pendence and the Constitution of the United 
States. Every cooperative movement entails the 
voluntary restriction of some of the individual 
liberties of the cooperators and nowhere is the 
willingness to compromise more necessary than 
in political experiments. The great asset of popu- 
lar government both in Great Britain and in the 
United States has always been that the people 
have, in spite of all obstructionists, insisted upon 
regarding their constitutions as living things, 
progressively changing and eternally adaptable. 
Thus do these governments survive in a changing 
world, and in the same manner the League of 
Nations may not merely maintain itself but 
progressively extend itself in a sphere of righteous 
influence. 

The signing of the Treaty at Versailles does not 
mark the definition of an unalterable world, or of 
an unchanging world. The processes of social 



LEAGUE AND A CHANGING WORLD 41 

change go on, treaty or no treaty, League of Na- 
tions or no League of Nations. 

There are four fundamental respects in which 
the nations and races of the world will continue 
in the process of change as they have in the past. 

Populations change. Great migrations of peo- 
ple from one area and one continent to another 
are continually changing and modifying the char- 
acter of the people inhabiting any given area, and 
dj the change of life the migrating people are 
themselves greatly changed. 

Nations will gain or lose in relative power and 
.nfluence; backward nations become forward na- 
:ions and forward nations decline. 

Forms of government change, and are likely to 
change even more rapidly in the future. 

Lastly, peoples change their religious faith and 
changes of faith profoundly modify every social, 
3Conomic and political institution. 

n 

POPULATIOl^S CHANGE 

We may be sure that the day of popular migra- 
tions has not passed when we look at the map of 
the world and note the present great inequality in 
the distribution of population with reference to 
the physical resources and climatic conditions of 
the earth. The North American continent is 
meagerly populated as compared with Europe, 
India or China, and South America, broadly 



42 A BETTER WORLD 

judged, is sparsely settled. Indeed, is the world 
not now in the very midst of its greatest period 
of westward migration? The European War has 
punctuated the period with a slight pause but no 
one can doubt but that the current of European 
migration to Canada, parts of the United States, 
Mexico and South America will resume within a 
very few years. ^ 

Likewise Africa is sparsely settled although 
very rich in natural resources and holding vast 
areas where high altitudes temper tropical 
climates and invite settlement. Already the stream 
of migration from crowded India to thinly popu- 
lated Africa has begun and the Indian immigrant 
along the east coast of Africa is beginning to 
modify political, economic and religious condi- 
tions, as well as greatly to be modified himself. 
Malaysia also offers another large area of the 
world fabulously rich in natural resources, where 
the population is relatively meager. There is a, 
steady stream of immigration to Malaysia both 
from India on the one side, and from China on 
the other. A new civilization is developing in 
Borneo and in such places as the Malay Peninsula. 

Who can doubt that such migration will as pro- 
foundly modify the world of the future as the 
migrations from Asia Minor and later from 
Europe modified the world of the past! Nor 
should we forget that in the past as new races 
formed and new countries were settled and de- 
veloped, the resulting political and economic 



LEAGUE AND A CHANGING WOELD 43 

changes were won, in almost every case, in the 
face of great opposition from older and better 
established governments and peoples. The League 
of Nations must not overlook this fact. 



Ill 

NATIONS CHANGE 

How difficult is it to define at any given moment 
the backward races! Fifty years ago Japan 
would presumably have been classified as among 
them but would the classification have been cor- 
rect, judging her in the light of the amazing vi- 
tality which she has displayed in the last half 
century? The Japanese now look upon the 
Koreans as a backward race, but there was a time 
not so many centuries ago when the Koreans 
looked down upon the Japanese as a backward 
race and the Chinese, in turn, looked down upon 
both. Likewise there was a time when the Indian 
races were more forward than the ancestors of 
the British who now rule over them. And where 
shall we classify, for example, such a nation as 
Portugal, which was once the most forward look- 
ing nation in all the western world? 

He would be a rash man indeed, who, in the 
light of history, would place the map of the world 
before him, and venture with his pencil to draw 
the lines which will separate for all time the back- 
ward from the forward peoples of the earth. 
There is certainly no reason for supposing that 



44 A BETTER WORLD 

those lines will always remain where they are 
now. We have, rather, to contemplate a world 
where the relative power and influence of states 
and races will go on changing until the end of 
time. 

That it is now even difficult to draw an exact 
line between the backward and the forward na- 
tions is nowhere in history more clearly illustrated 
than in the recent war and the ensuing peace. If 
we have been accustomed to draw the line between 
the *^ powers" and the *' backward nations'' geo- 
graphically, putting it somewhere a little east of 
the Adriatic and north of the Mediterranean and 
always east of the Pacific Ocean, we have been 
disillusioned. If we have been disposed to identify 
it with the world's color-line we were equally mis- 
taken. The role which each nation played in the 
Peace Conference is not an absolute guide as to 
the relative strength of its power, but a little sum- 
mary is illuminating. Russia, Prussia and Aus- 
tria, the creators of the Holy Alliance of one hun- 
dred years ago, were not even represented. At 
that time Italy, Belgium and China, Japan, Aus- 
tralia, South Africa — mentioning only some of the 
peoples who exercised very important influences 
at Quai d'Orsay — had not even appeared on the 
horizon, and the United States of America did not 
have more influence at Vienna in 1815 than Spain 
or Portugal had at Paris in 1919. 

Some of the most serious problems with which 
the Peace Conference had to deal, perhaps the 



LEAGUE AND A CHANGING WORLD 45 

most delicate of all, were not only undefined but 
iinlieard of a centnry ago : the disposal of portions 
of Africa and the islands of the Pacific; the pro- 
tection of China; the international color question 
and the Monroe Doctrine. 

With the exception of Great Britain and the 
United States the balance of power in the Peace 
Conference was held by Japan. Her withdrawal 
and refusal to sign the Treaty would have created 
j^reater new obstacles to peace than the with- 
Irawal of any other power. If Japan had with- 
drawn, and had allied herself with Germany or 
j[taly the combination would have been profoundly 
iisturbing. 

. Nor can we forget the debt which the world owes 
o China even though it was a debt which China 
yas quite willing to pay. If China had appeared 
^it the Peace Conference as Japan wished her to 
lippear, as a silent partner of the yellow race, 
icquiescing in the program which Japan had 
ramed, the world of tomorrow would be already 
aced with a most formidable Oriental Imperial- 
3m, for the control of China involves the eventual 
ontrol of India, Malaysia, Tibet and Siberia; in 
act, of Asia and the Pacific. The cause of China 
;s it was presented at the Peace Conference and 
eferred to the League of Nations concerns much 
jiore than China; it involves the destinies of the 
rorld. 

, Who would have believed, a century ago, that 
he fate of the world could rest even to the present 



46 A BETTEE WOELD 

extent with two non-Christian peoples, at that 
time all but unknown 1 

It is very evident that those groups of peoples! 
which may be gathered under the general classifi-j 
cations of the non-Christian, the backward and thej 
colonial races, are going to bulk very much larger; 
in the economy and polity of the world in thej 
twentieth century than they did in the nineteenth.: 

The war gave to many of them a new dignityl 
both in their own estimation and also in the eyes 
of the western nations. No less than twenty non- 
Christian races participated in the war in Europe, 
Africa or Asia. They represented almost everj 
form of government from absolute despotism to 
republics, from almost independent colonies to ab- 
solute possessions. They included one of the 
*^Five Powers," as well as some of the most back- 
ward of races. Practically all species of religion 
were there. There were fourteen non-Christian 
delegates at the Peace Table, representing five 
non-Christian peoples. 

These various peoples have been brought under 
influences which were for them most liberalizing 
and stimulating both to individual and to national 
aspirations. Many a Chinese cooly, Senegalese 
soldier, and Hindu or Mohammedan trooper is go- 
ing back to revolutionize the whole mental and 
political outlook of his village. For his family, 
his tribe or his clan he will be the window through 
which the others look out upon a hitherto un- 
dreamed of world. He will have an influence upon 



LEAGUE AND A CHANGING WORLD 47 

he industry of his people, for he has been intro- 
luced to the value of motor power and of labor- 
aving machinery. He has been taught the uses 
if sanitation, and quite possibly he has been cared 
or in a military hospital under the direction of 
Mlful physicians and trained nurses. Not long 
.go I visited such a hospital in France where at 
Bast a dozen different colored or tinted races were 
11 associating together and being cared for by 
t^omen. It is difficult to imagine limits to the 
ofluences which are thus released by the war upon 
he continents of Africa and Asia. 

The signing of peace promises to usher in an 
ra of railway building across the frontiers of 
ivilization similar to that which led the western 
evelopment of the United States, following the 
lose of the Civil War. This will be accompanied 
,y the establishment of new maritime shipping 
outes, new cables, new telegraphs, telephones, 
jdreless, and aeroplane service. 

The great barrier to international communica- 
[Lons of all sorts has in the past been lack of in- 
.3rnational confidence. Both Asia and Africa were 
ivided up and segregated into parts as much by 
,3ar as by geographical configuration. 

Governments blocked governments in the build- 
ig of railways and in the development of harbors. 
)ne nation did not dare to build or permit an- 
ther nation to build an artery of travel which 
light eventually be used for the invasion by a 
ostile army. The Treaty of Peace, the League of 



48 A BETTER WORLD 

Nations, and more especially the urgent needs o1 
tlie great powers for the development of ne^^ 
economic resources, to aid them in paying off th( 
huge war debts, are already conspiring to brin| 
about the opening up of these new communications 
which up to now have been impossible. 

These new lines will have two main influences 
They will bring the backward nations closer to th( 
doors of the western powers than they have eve] 
been before, but more important still is the fad 
that they will bring the backward races closer t( 
each other. New perceptions of unity will emerge 

Some years ago Siam decided that she musi 
have some railways. This was a very importani 
step for this little isolated people tucked away ai 
the head of a long gulf and far removed from the 
line of trade routes. The contract for buildin 
the railway was let to a British firm. This wa 
very acceptable to the British Government, fo. 
Siam bordel's on the Federated Malay States and 
the British protectorates of the Malay Peninsula 
But the German Government immediately pro- 
tested to Siam that it was unfair to Germany t 
put the Siamese railways exclusively in the hand 
of the British. The Siamese Government, there 
fore, to satisfy the Germans, agreed to appoin 
German inspectors to supervise the British con 
tractors. I 

It was not long before the British firm waj 
ready to give up in despair, to relinquish the coi 
tract. It was found to be impossible, or ui 



LEAGUE AND A CHANGING WORLD 49 

profitable, to build the road in the way the German 
inspectors required. A German firm immediately 
took up the contract, finished the railway and be- 
gan to operate it for the Siamese Government. 

The next logical step for Siam would have been 
to build a connecting link down toward the rail- 
ways of the Federated Malay States which reach 
up from Singapore. The connection would be ex- 
tremely advantageous to Siam, for it would go 
far toward connecting the nation with the outside 
world. The arrangement would be equally ad- 
vantageous to Singapore and the Malay Peninsula 
but for the single fact that the Siamese lines were 
in the hands of the Germans. The British authori- 
ties did not dare to expose the north-eastern bor- 
ders of Malaysia to such a danger. During the 
war the German influence in Siam was eliminated, 
the connecting road was immediately begun. It 
IS now possible to get on the train at Singapore 
and go by rail to Bangkok. 

The present very circuitous water route from 
India and the West to China and Japan by way 
of Singapore can be very much shortened by 
building a railway up through Burma, into south- 
western China. Having crossed the borders of 
China, a difficult but by no means impossible 
engineering feat, such a railway would connect 
up with the French line already built from French 
Indo-China up to Yunnan-fu; it would communi- 
cate directly with Hong-Kong and Canton through 
the West River Valley and it could also be ex- 



50 A BETTER WORLD 

tended across Western China to join the upper 
Yangtse Valley, and thence to Shanghai. These 
routes have often been discussed, surveys have 
been made, but the lines have not been built. Why? 
Because the Powers have been afraid of each 
other, and no one was sure that some Power would 
not eventually get exclusive possession of China. 
England is not likely to take any steps which will 
facilitate communications between India on the 
one hand and China and Japan on the other so 
long as there is no assurance that such communi- 
cations may not expose to military attack another 
flank of the Indian Empire. 

Today they will tell you in Delhi that they soon 
expect to see the travelling time between Delhi 
and London reduced to eight days by way of the 
Persian Gulf, the Bagdad Railway, Constantinople 
and Europe. Only a few miles of track, relatively, 
remain to be laid. Why was not this line built 
long ago? Lack of international confidence, the 
fear of German imperialistic aggression. 

In the same way Africa is being united, not only 
to itself but also to Europe, by railways, the vari- 
ous segments of which are already built or 
planned, and the connections delayed until the es- 
tablishment of international confidence. 

In the dizziness which comes when we contem- 
plate the annihilation of distances which is upon 
us, we must not miss the immeasurable significance 
of these things in the certain modification of the 
ideals and purposes of hundreds of millions of 



LEAGUE AND A CHANGING WORLD 51 

people, and in their relations political, economic 
and spiritual with the states which now look down 
upon them as backward peoples. The unity simi- 
lar to that which is coming to India as a result of 
the wonderful Indian railway system is drawing 
near for the entire world. 

Not only is that two-thirds of the world which 
was little articulate at the Peace Conference soon 
to be placed at the very doors of the western na- 
tions, multiplying a hundred-fold the points of 
contact between them, but the representatives of 
these same western nations are going to be thrust 
out more and more along the old and new trade 
routes into the midst of these hitherto little 
noticed peoples. It will become a matter of in- 
creasing concern to many fathers and mothers 
even in America to know that the land to which 
their sons and daughters have gone is a safe place 
to live in. 

I The war has set free the imaginations of the 
'young people of the western world even as the 
j voyages of discovery released the mind of Europe 
I in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The 
i soldiers are home-sick now and glad to return 
home. But will they remain, contented with the 
! humdrum, in-door life of industry? Certainly 
!not all of them. In France they met men from 
ithe four corners of the earth, the modem fron- 
Itiersmen of the world from Africa, Asia and the 
! islands of the sea. They now have many windows- 
I in their horizon which they did not have before. 



52 A BETTER WOELD 

and there are going to be plenty of positions open 
for such men in the immense commercial and in- 
dustrial development which is already starting. A 
strong emigration movement has already begun 
in England where we might expect it first to ap- 
pear, but the movement will not be confined to 
any single country, and the United States will 
surely share in it. 

The non-Christian races have already acquired 
not only a new political but also a new economic 
importance in the life of the world. Even if we 
assume that with the assistance of the League of 
Nations the political and military struggle of the 
future may be avoided or allayed, we have to 
recognize that the economic conflict must be met. 
The bulk of the world's supply of raw materials 
lies quite outside the confines of either Europe or 
North America: the great labor markets of the 
world are in Africa and Asia where there is a 
population of close to a billion people. Those 
markets are now nearer to New York, measured 
by cost of transportation and time involved, than 
St. Louis was a century ago. j 

Coincident with the new political and economic 
importance of the non-Christian races in the life 
of the world is the development of the nationalist 
spirit and the demand for self-government on the 
one hand, and, on the other, resentment at the 
paternalism of the Powers toward weak nations 
now independent but not sufficiently strong to de- 
fend their sovereignty or integrity. This is both 



LEAGUE AND A CHANGING WORLD 53 

alarming and reassuring. If it were to receive its 
Pull measure of immediate satisfaction it is un- 
likely that there would be a net gain either to 
Deace or to justice in the world. So long as there is 
iouble dealing among the Powers, the throwing of 
a, multitude of new rich and defenseless states into 
the arena would precipitate such mad stampedes 
^or possession as the world has never yet seen, 
ft must also be remembered that independence 
md democracy are not necessarily averse to im- 
perialism. Small independent states might be- 
5ome the victims of other small states. What 
lations in all the world's history have ever fol- 
lowed more consistently imperialistic policies in 
; :he last century than Great Britain and the United 
I States, the two leading democracies of the world? 
I Let not our love of country blind ourselves to the 
I "act that the nation, in extending its sovereignty 
.vest, south and north, has seldom paused to ask 
I'or the consent of the governed when necessity for 
imnexation arose. Pew nations have more un- 
lovely chapters than ours in our relations with 
\he red-men. Nor did we ask for the consent of 
:he governed when we occupied the Philippines. 
But even assuming that by international agree- 
ifnent the independence of such new states as 
; Egypt, India, Java, and what was formerly Ger- 
jnan South-west Africa could be guaranteed, we 
l^annot fail to see that these peoples are too hope- 
jiessly disunited, inexperienced in the art of gov- 
ernment, ignorant, and too deficient in a sense of 



54 A BETTER WORLD 

social responsibility, to maintain a just govern- 
ment resting on the consent of the governed. 

On the other hand, in this desire for independ- 
ence and self-government lies the hope of the 
world's peace. This assertion strikes too many 
responsive chords in the hearts of Americans to 
require elaboration. Government by the consent 
of the governed is a truism. We believe in it, at 
least for ourselves, with our whole hearts. Ameri- 
cans know that no power can eternally thwart the 
desire of a people for self-government, nor can 
the will of the majority be forever defeated. Per- 
haps we ought to add that this conviction also 
fairly throbs in a literature which we have in- 
herited largely from the British Isles, and to a 
less degree from France, Germany and Western 
Europe. ! 

The future of the Western Powers rests with 
how they meet this desire for self-government and 
independence which is now appearing among the 
weaker nations so long dormant. If the Western 
Powers deliberately encourage it and meet it 
fairly, well and good. If they unite to suppress 
it, then shall the world be miserable indeed. 

IV 

FOEMS OP GOVERNMENT CHANGE 

We may see the proof that the world is chang- 
ing not only in the advancing and receding line 
which separates the backward and the master na- 



LEAGUE AND A CHANGING WORLD 55 

tions, but also in the changes which occur within 
the master nations themselves. Surely we must 
be struck with the force of that majestic hymn 
**0h where are kings and empires now, of old that 
went and came, ' ' when we glance at the continent 
of Europe. Forms of government are among the 
most constantly changing of human institutions. 
Pew care to assert that any nation has yet achieved 
the ultimate best and we do not have to look too 
carefully over the map of the world to see that 
some of the worst forms of government still sur- 
v^ive. 

At the present moment the governments of the 
ioUowing countries of the Eastern hemisphere are 
in peculiarly unstable condition: Eussia, Germany, 
Austria, Italy, Spain, Portugal, China, all of the 
Balkan States; and then we have to consider all 
of the new states which are now beginning to re- 
form government which has been suppressed for 
generations, or are now for the first time in the 
modern age to lift their heads as free peoples. 
Many of these new governments are taking on new 
forms the exact nature of which we cannot yet 
foresee. Nor can we forget that Mexico and the 
Latin- American States are still in a condition of 
3ux in which new changes may appear at any mo- 
oaent. 

We note that the trend is always toward a 
I larger sphere for democratic control. Dr. Cor- 
aelius H. Patton in *^ World Facts and America's 
Responsibility," (Association Press; New York) 



56 A BETTER WORLD 

lists no less than thirty-eight events in the years 
1917 and 1918 in which important steps were taken 
towards democracy, and the year 1919 may possi- 
bly produce almost as many more. The process 
of change which is now going on in Great Britain, 
which will be directly communicated to India and 
to every British colony and dominion marks this 
age as one of the most unstable and unpredictable 
as well as the most democratic that the world has 
ever seen. 

Are not all colonial governments especially, in 
a state of transition ? The holding of a backward 
people as a colonial possession is now recognized 
to be far from the asset which a colony was once 
assumed to be. A colony is always a military lia- 
bility in time of war, and in times of peace it is 
not inevitably a source of profit. Germany's 
African colonies were not profitable. Morocco is 
not a source of profit to Spain. Many Spaniards 
even will tell you that the possession of Morocco 
is one of the greatest obstacles to Spanish 
progress, for it supplies the sole excuse for the 
continuance of a system of militarism which 
thwarts internal reforms. The public sentiment 
of the world is rapidly reaching a point where it 
will be a reproach to any nation to make a profit 
out of a colony which rests on military force. 

It is possible to build up a very strong argument 
to show that a colonial possession is always de- 
moralizing to a nation. The decline of all the 
great nations of the past began immediately after 



LEAGUE AND A CHANGING WOELD 57 

the time when they reached the maximum point in 
colonial expansion. Eome, Spain and Portugal 
are examples of nations where there was a very- 
direct connection between the exploitation of the 
colonies and the moral weakening of the possessing 
nation. We may seriously doubt whether any 
modern power is morally stronger, whether its 
national culture is more secure, or whether its 
national existence is better insured because it 
has colonial possessions. 

The Treaty of Versailles brings us to a new 
phase in the life of the world. New political 
theories are taking shape and finding assent where 
before they have been unknown. The great west- 
ern powers have already accepted the doctrine 
that government exists by consent of the governed. 
To vindicate this principle the greatest war in 
the history of the world has been fought and won. 
The principle has failed of legal incorporation in 
the treaty of peace as applicable to subject peo- 
iple, but it has been incorporated in their hearts 
jand in ours as well. One fancies that a man who 
! would stand up before an American audience to 
defend the principle that subject races ought to 
be kept permanently in subjection would have a 
jcool reception. 

I Is it not quite plain that the theory of the con- 

jsent of the governed must be applied eventually 

I in Asia and Africa even as the United States is 

Qow applying it in Cuba and in the Philippines? 

And if these races are to govern themselves some 



58 A BETTER WORLD 

day, either with the consent of those who now 
govern them or without it, what form of govern- 
ment will they adopt! It is not likely that they 
will consent to despotism and it seems hardly 
possible that the western powers would permit 
despotism to be thrust upon them. Despotic gov- 
ernment in the future would menace the peace 
of the world even as Russia and Turkey threat- 
ened it in the past. Indeed there is little safety 
in a world where huge masses of people are un- 
able to declare whether they will make war or 
have peace. The whole world is moving toward 
some general form of democratic or delegated 
government, and the peace of the world can not 
finally be assured until nations and races have all 
learned to march to the same tune and to keep 
step with the principles of ordered liberty. 

The day is fast approaching when we shall 
recognize a backward race of people or a back- 
ward government as as much of an intolerable 
nuisance in the world as we now recognize a back- 
ward family to be a nuisance in the neighborhood. 
In fact one cannot now point to a single backward 
people or a nation unable to maintain a stable 
government which is not a menace to the peace of 
the world, and also a menace to the character of 
her neighbors. So long as Naboth has a vineyard 
Ahab will want it, even in spite of the attached 
liabilities, physical and moral. 

Expediency as well as justice would seem to 
indicate that the only way in which the world may 



LEAGUE AND A CHANGING WORLD 59 

have any assurance of ultimate peace is for the 
colonial nations now to declare frankly to their 
colonies, as the United States promised the Fili- 
pinos, that self-government and independence 
await every people the moment they give evidence 
that they are capable of sustaining them. Many 
naively hoped that the Peace Conference would 
lay down such a principle, but the Conference was 
in no mood for such declarations. Perhaps it is 
as well that the subject was avoided, for such self- 
denying ordinances, to be effective, must be passed 
by the nations who make the denials, not by some 
one else in their behalf. 

V 

PEOPLE CHANGE THEIE BELIGION 

Lastly, there is religious change. We shall re- 
serve extended treatment of this subject for later 
chapters. It is sufficient, at the moment, for the 
completion of the present statement, to draw at- 
tention to the fact that the 635,250,000 people who 
now comprise the Christian section of the world's 
population are not in any way the direct 
descendants of the original twelve disciples whom 
Jesus called, as would seem to be assumed by those 
who argue that religions are unalterable. The re- 
ligious map of the world changes with tremendous 
rapidity. 



60 A BETTEE WORLD 

VI 

THE WRECK OF THE **HOLY ALLIAITOE" 

The League is not tlie first institution of its 
kind which has been created to prevent future 
wars. At the end of every war for the last three 
centuries raen have dreamed of some effective con- 
cert of powers by which individual nations could 
be restrained from again disturbing the world's 
peace. On September 26, 1815, near Chalons, 
France, at a grand review of the Allied troops 
who had just defeated Napoleon for the last time, 
the Tsar Alexander of Eussia proclaimed to the 
world the so-called *^Holy Alliance" which had 
been given the dignity of a treaty twelve days be- 
fore, signed by Eussia, Austria and Prussia. 
France was later admitted to the agreement.' 
Prof. J. A. E. Marriott, the Oxford historian, calls' 
the Holy Alliance ^^the only practical attempt to 
apply the principles of Christianity to the regula- 
tion of international politics.'' The text of the 
Alliance states that it *^has no other object than 
to publish, in the face of the whole world, their 
fixed resolution (Tsar, King of Prussia and Em-j 
peror of Austria) to take for their sole guide the 
precepts of that Holy Eeligion — namely, the pre- 
cepts of Justice, Christian Charity, and Peace — 
which, far from being applicable only to private 
concerns, must have an immediate influence upon 
the counsels of Princes and guide all their 
steps. . . . Conformably to the words of the Holy 



LEAGUE AND A CHANGING WORLD 61 

Scriptures, the three monarchs will remain united 
by the bonds of a true and indissoluble fra- 
ternity. ' ' 

*^We may well recall the situation," writes 
Prof. Marriott, in The European Commonwealth 
(The European Commonwealth: Problems His- 
torical and Diplomatic; Clarendon Press, Oxford, 
1918). ^^The Allied Armies were for a second time 
in occupation of the French Capital. The dra- 
matic episode of the * Hundred Days' had reached 
its climax at Waterloo ; Napoleon was a prisoner 
in English custody, and the Sovereigns and Gov- 
ernments of Europe were engaged upon the dif- 
ficult and delicate task of arranging the terms of 
what they hoped might be a durable peace for 
Europe and for France. For nearly a quarter of 
a century, with very brief interludes, Europe had 
been at war. There had been fighting in France, 
in the Netherlands, in Italy, in Germany, in Portu- 
gal and Spain, in Eussia, in Egypt, in India, in 
South Africa, in North America and on every sea. 
The European Stated-system was in ruins : houses, 
fields and cities were laid waste ; a whole genera- 
tion of the peoples of Europe had groaned under 
the horrors of perpetual war, under the economic 
privations they were compelled to suffer, under 
the burdens, military and financial, which were 
laid upon them. No statesman whose heart was 
not utterly cold and hard could look without pro- 
found emotion upon their sufferings and sacri- 
fices.'' 



62 A BETTER WOELD 

The Holy Alliance was built on two unstable 
foundations which had been incorporated into the 
Treaty of Vienna — the primary interests of rul- 
ing families and the theory of the balance of 
power. It was wrecked by modern liberalism and 
the new-born spirit of nationality. It became a 
league of autocrats bent on protecting autocracy. 
Only five years later the Holy Alliance was father- 
ing an invasion of Spain to suppress a revolution 
for republican government, and a similar invasion 
of Naples to defeat both republicanism and 
nationality. 

The Holy Alliance failed because it did not 
recognize a changing world. Specifically, it ig- 
nored that drift toward democracy which had 
already begun. The League of Nations might 
easily fail for similar reasons. 

The world has moved forward between the days 
of the Holy Alliance and the League of Nations. 
How far it has moved we can see from the fact 
that the rights of royal families are not even an 
issue and the theory of nationality is honestly 
recognized although its application is circum- 
scribed. But the League, like the Alliance, rests 
on foundations hardly stable. The color question 
is dodged, the rights of races under subjection to 
colonial governments which survived the war are 
ignored, and there is instead of democracy be- 
tween nations an oligarchy of Powers. 

More unsettling still to the peace of the world 
is the fear that the machinery of the League of 



LEAGUE AND A CHANGING WORLD 63 

Nations can be used to suppress revolution in 
those belated countries of the world which have 
not yet been able to share fully in the republican 
revolutiojis of the last century. Furthermore, 
every indication points to the nearness of an- 
other revolutionary movement, economic rather 
|than political, which will cut across national lines 
and unite millions of people in a protest against 
the ^^ economic serfdom," to borrow President 
Wilson's phrase, in which they are now held. 

*^What we seek,'' said President Wilson, ^4s 
the reign of law based upon the consent of the 
governed, and sustained by the organized opinion 
of mankind. ' ' What we actually have, as a rapid 
glance over Africa, Asia and many portions of 
South America, as well as over Europe shows, is 
something quite the reverse. 

^^The League of Nations is already dead," an- 
nounced an American newspaper, even before the 
final draft of its first covenant had been pub- 
lished. That was a hasty verdict for the League 
was not at that time even born. But it is true that 
the only life the League of Nations will ever have 
is that which it may be able to draw from the lively 
international interests of the nations which are 
leagued together. In practice, the life of the 
Tifiague will be merely the average of the life of its 
corporate parts. Averages, be it remembered, 
\v hile higher than the lowest in the series of which 
the average is taken, are also lower than the high- 
est. So will it be with the League. As with Pro- 



64 A BETTER WORLD 

hibition, its effectiveness depends on pnblic senti- 
ment, and unorganized pnblic sentiment gathered 
from all over the world and then averaged up is 
apt to be rather low. 

The *^ public opinion of mankind," so far from 
being ''organized" by the war, or the peace, in 
support of ''a reign of law based on the consent 
of the governed," is quite disorganized. The com- 
plexity of the problems of a reconstruction now 
presented has frightened multitudes into reaction, 
with the cry that no price is too great to pay for 
the maintenance of peace. Thus we get a new 
type of pacifist — the man who fears change. And, 
strangely enough, he is the very man who during 
the war was the most ardent of jingoes and 
militarists. On the other hand very many of those 
who were the most ardent pacifists in 1914 and 
before have now quite reversed themselves. 

The League of Nations, as an effective and 
adaptable instrument for the protection of de- 
mocracy, the preservation of peace, and the pro- 
motion of international amity, will exist solely 
by the grace of public sentiment. It is, at least 
it may be, a ''living thing," if a living public 
opinion, a world opinion, supports it. 

If we had a better world we could already have 
a better League. We do not have to be taken into 
the confidence of the diplomats who framed the 
League to know why it, and the peace treaty with 
which it is associated, fall so far short of justice 
and the high ideals by which the world was roused ; 



LEAGUE AND A CHANGING WORLD 65 

to the battle. The moral responsibilities of mem- 
bership had, of necessity, to be let down or there 
would have been no league at all. 

We may wish that the League had made a 
declaration of principles more consistently in line 
with the democratic aspirations of the people of 
the world. We know why it did not ; but there is 
no reason why the Christian people of the world 
should not make such a declaration of principles 
and adopt a program which will look definitely 
towards its accomplishment — no reason, that is, 
save timidity and ignorance. If every Christian 
Church in the world would place sincerely above 
its doors the legend : THIS CHUECH EXISTS 
THAT THE WORLD MAY BE FREE, it would 
not only be putting itself in line with the words 
of the Master whom it exalts, but it would also 
be putting the world within sight of freedom it- 
self. 

We do not have to conclude that the League of 
Nations will be an instrument of evil, although we 
may well be alert to see that it does not become 
just that. The new international relationships of 
the world are still in the hands of those who 
create public opinion. With the right sort of 
public opinion supporting it the League may in- 
deed be the herald of a new day. 



CHAPTER III 

CHEISTIANITY, DEMOCRACY AND 
INTERNATIONALISM 

I 

DOES CHEISTIANITY CEEATE DEMOCKACY? 

The affirmation in the preceding chapter, that the 
world would be within sight of freedom if only the 
Christian church willed it, rests on an assumption 
which is subject to challenge. Before one can ac- 
cept the statement that the Christian Church has 
it within its power to put the world almost im- 
mediately within sight of freedom or of de- 
mocracy, he must feel assured that Christianity 
actually contributes to or creates democracy. Not 
everyone feels that assurance and it must be ad- 
mitted that not all of the facts within our view 
point in that direction. 

In the discussion of the relation between Chris- 
tianity and democracy we have to recognize sev- 
eral divisions of the subject. Not every one starts 
to argue this case with the same set of facts in 
mind, and w people trouble to have all the facts 
in front of them before they begin to draw their 
conclusions. Many will prefer to start with what 

66 



CHEISTIANITY 67 

lies closest to their own immediate experience, 
that is, with the average American individual 
Protestant church or denomination. Others will 
draw their conclusions from their observations of 
the Koman Catholic Church as it is at the present 
time. Those who are fresh from a study of the 
European conditions which preceded the European 
war may ignore almost entirely the American and 
Canadian Churches, both Catholic and Protestant. 
A few will pass by both Europe and America and 
study the fresh evidence of the influences of 
Christianity on social and political institutions 
when Christian faith begins to work under an alto- 
gether new set of conditions, as in China, India 
or Africa. Even all of these partial views when 
taken together will hardly suffice until they are re- 
lated to a historical survey of the development of 
Christianity through the centuries, from the days 
of its beginning among a subject race in Palestine. 



II 

I 

THE VICES OF IGNOKAN^CE AKD INDOLEITCE 

My friend who has just been baptized into the 
spirit of the social revolution (I use the term 
broadly, not in the special sense of the Social 
Revolution which the extreme radical is expecting 
to appear shortly in both Europe and America) 
looks upon the average American Protestant 
church either with indifference or with contempt. 
He regards the Church as the agent of the ^^rul- 



68 A BETTER WORLD 

ing classes,^' by which he means those who own 
or control large blocks of property, money or 
vested interests, and he says that the Church is 
being nsed to mislead the masses of people and 
to thwart their will. He asserts that the pri- 
mary purpose of the church is to transfer the 
center of attention from the evils of the present 
to the prospect of future blessedness in heaven 
and thus to dull the edge of poverty, injustice and 
oppression as they now exist even in America. 
To my radical friend the Church is a gigantic 
lobby for Privilege in the innermost chambers 
of the Court of Public Opinion. 

My other friend, whose consuming earnestness 
is limited to some individual social, political or 
economic reform, reports that he does not receive 
the hearty support of the Church and that he notes 
a far more vigorous moral response from a large 
and constantly increasing group of citizens who 
are all but entirely detached from any relation 
to the Church. 

Before attempting to verify the truth of these 
assertions or to fix responsibility we may well 
recognize certain indisputable facts with refer- 
ence to American Protestantism. 

The discussion should be prefaced by a defi- 
nition of terms. When we use the word 
** Church'' in the following pages we have in mind 
only one of the common usages. We mean merely 
the church as a social organization with rules of 
discipline and direction for its members. In this 



CHEISTIANITY 69 

respect we distinguish the use, on the one hand, 
from that which identifies it with a building used 
for religious purposes, and on the other, from 
its use as applied to an invisible union of the 
spirit of those who have been admitted to the 
circle of Christian discipleship. 

A Protestant church or a Protestant denomina- 
tion in the United States or Canada is a purely 
voluntary organization. Even the most radical 
critic must admit that this is a free country to the 
extent that membership in no church is compul- 
sory. Any person who does not like a church is per- 
fectly free not to join it, or, if he finds himself al- 
ready a member he is entirely free to withdraw. 
Indeed there are very few churches which even 
teach that theirs is the exclusive way of salva- 
tion, and there is no law which can compel a mem- 
ber of even such a church to believe such a doc- 
trine when it is taught. The church, in our usage 
of the term, is a voluntary organization; this 
means that it is entirely dependent upon the good- 
will of its members and of the community gen- 
erally. When the church loses the good-will of 
its members, and eventually that of the commu- 
nity, it is reduced to impotence. The church au- 
tomatically loses its life when it loses its support. 

In this fundamental respect the American Prot- 
estant Church is the very expression of democ- 
racy itself. There is no other social institution 
where such direct and immediate action can be ob- 
tained as in any free Protestant church. If the 



70 A BETTER WOELD 

church does not represent the will of its members 
they can do either one or both of two things. They 
can cancel their subscriptions to its support or 
they can withdraw, leaving it an empty, idle hulk. 

Only the indolence of the members of a free 
church thwarts its democracy. That indolence 
often exists, but it is common to all organization. 
I have sat in a labor union council and heard the 
members upbraided for failure to appear and cast 
their votes at a meeting in which delegates were 
elected to represent the unions in a higher body 
with legislative powers. A small clique had ob- 
tained control of the union simply by their fidel- 
ity in attending meetings. The next week after 
I attended the labor meeting I went into a church 
where exactly the same thing had happened. A 
small group had obtained control of the church, 
not by any strong-arm methods, but merely by ex- 
ercising the fidelity which was actually the neg- 
lected duty of all the members. 

A rich man or a group of rich men can control 
the teaching within a given church only when the 
majority of the members of the church, if op- 
posed, are too indolent or indifferent to express 
themselves. If, when the majority express them- 
selves, the rich man withdraws, it is, of course, 
incumbent upon the majority to make up to the 
church treasury the financial loss which falls upon 
the church. The only way any man, rich or poor, 
can thwart the will of the majority is through 
their unwillingness to assume the responsibility 



CHRISTIANITY 71 

for equal financial obligations or equal fidelity to 
its work. Indolence, not autocracy or bureau- 
cracy, is the great charge to be made against the 
Church. There are thousands of people in the 
church who are not only too indolent to express 
themselves in its management, but too indolent 
even to withdraw their names from the church 
rolls. 

Furthermore, we must remember that there are 
no other public assemblies in the entire world 
where the appeal is so persistently made to the 
hearers to follow the promptings of the awakened 
conscience, and it is in the functioning of the 
awakened conscience that democracy has its birth 
and daily nourishment. The great indictment to 
be brought against the Church is not that it fails 
to attempt to awaken the conscience of the indi- 
vidual, but that it often fails to set before the 
awakened conscience the facts from which a cor- 
rect moral purpose may be framed. Ignorance 
and indolence are the two great vices of church- 
members, but they are also the great vices of 
lodge-members, corporation-members, labor-un- 
ion-members, and political-party-members. In 
short, they are the besetting sins of democracy 
itself, and the church shares them because the 
church is democratic. 



72 A BETTER WORLD 

III 

SECTS AS THE EXPEESSION OF SELF-DETERMINATION" 

On the other hand we must not appraise the be- 
setting sins of indolence and ignorance in the 
church as greater than they actually are. The 
multitude of denominations and sects within 
Protestantism are not so much its shame as its 
glory. Critics of the Church on the score of its 
failure to be democratic are curiously inconsistent 
at this point, for they frequently join that charge 
with another one, viz., that Protestantism is hope- 
lessly divided. They forget that denominations 
are merely examples of '^self-determination'' 
within the church, and that the fact that we have 
them and that Protestantism finds it so difficult 
to get together is itself a proof that indolence of 
conscience and ignorance of mind are not all-per- 
vasive. 

It is possible to call together the nations of the 
earth and to frame a Treaty of Peace in which 
great moral principles are compromised or ig- 
nored. This is possible because of the political 
and moral indolence and ignorance of the great 
masses of people who make up the nations which 
are represented in the treaty. It would be ut- 
terly impossible to call together an equally large 
number of the representatives of divided Chris- 
tendom and get them to sign any treaty of peace 
whatever, much less a contract to unite. Even if 
the churches could agree on a statement of the- 



CHEISTIANITY 73 

ology, wMch they cannot do because theology 
rests ultimately on moral convictions and the 
validity of individual conscience, they would ut- 
terly fail to agree on a host of non-theological 
matters which also rest on the convictions of en- 
lightened conscience. I have in mind doctrines 
ranging all the way from the celibacy of the 
clergy, the authority of the episcopate, the use 
of the sacraments, the obligations of religious 
education and the scope of its work, to the prac- 
tice of using Moody and Sankey hymns. Even 
the matter of women's hats in churches reaches 
pretty deep when one begins to discuss it in a 
congress of Christendom. If the delegates to such 
a hypothetical conference set their signatures to 
a peace pact of the kind indicated the members of 
the churches represented would repudiate their 
representatives. Before the delegates even 
reached home the armistice would be discontinued 
and the war would be on again — a war not with 
machine-guns, submarines, blockades and big Ber- 
thas, but with renewed appeals to the individual 
conscience and with newly formed battalions of 
facts. 

The Christian Church had its birth in separa- 
tion, extended itself from age to age by divisions 
as well as by union and, wherever the Gospel of 
Christ is preached the rights of division grow 
apace. Self-determination appeared as an ec- 
clesiastical theory long before it was recognized 
in politics. Hierarchies, Protestant as well as Eo- 



74 A BETTER WOELD 

man and Greek, have risen only to fall. Where 
ecclesiastical organizations have lost contact with 
the people who supported them, or have attempted 
to thwart the popular will, they have been dis- 
placed. 

IV 

THE LOST IN'TERN'ATIONAIi AND INTER-RACIAL IDEAL 

The Roman Catholic Church is only a little 
farther removed from the popular will than is the 
Protestant Church. A purely congregational 
form of ecclesiastical government is the extreme 
Left of which the Catholic organization is the 
extreme Right, if we may be allowed to use terms 
borrowed from European politics. No one ought 
to fail to recognize that cross-currents of influ- 
ence leading to fundamental modifications of atti- 
tude travel back and forth between these two ex- 
tremes. The Roman Catholic Church, when jux- 
taposed with Protestant Churches, especially with 
Free Protestant Churches, never occupies the po- 
sition of the extreme ecclesiastical Right of au- 
tocracy. The Roman Catholic Church is not a 
little responsive to the spirit of democracy, for 
in the last analysis it must make its appeal to the 
same court of public opinion which determines 
the character of every church. 

The old affirmation ^*Rome never changes" is . 
not borne out by facts, if by it we mean that the 
Roman Catholic Church never changes. It has 
changed in the United States from what it was in 



CHEISTIANITY 75 

the old world. It is changing in Mexico, and in 
the last two decades in the Philippines it has be- 
come an altogether different institution from what 
it was in Spanish days. The Roman Catholic 
Church in Spain today is quite different from what 
it was in the days of the Inquisition and from 
what it is in modern England. 

It is the fashion for Protestants smugly to criti- 
cize the Eoman Catholic Church for its lack of 
democracy. Lack of democracy in organization 
and administration there surely is; yet it some- 
times happens that the Eoman Church adjusts it- 
self more quickly to popular aspirations than do 
Protestant denominations. In France at the pres- 
ent moment the Catholic Church is more deeply 
committed to improved labor conditions through 
the Catholic syndicates or industrial unions, than 
is the French Protestant Church. Nor can we 
overlook the fact that the Eoman Catholic Church 
in the United States, through the National Cath- 
olic War Council, has recently gone on record 
for a form of social ownership of the means of 
production which is far more explicit and more 
in line with the democratic movement of the age 
in industry than many a Protestant denomination 
can claim: 

** Nevertheless the full possibilities of increased 
production will not be realized so long as the ma- 
jority of the workers remain mere wage earners. 
The majority must somehow become owners, or 
at least in part, of the instruments of production. 



76 A BETTER WORLD 

They can be enabled to reach this stage gradually 
through cooperative productive societies and co- 
partnership arrangements. In the former the 
workers own and manage the industries them- 
selves; in the latter they own a substantial part 
of the corporate stock and exercise a reasonable 
share in the management. However slow the at- 
tainment of these ends, they will have to be 
reached before we can have a thoroughly efficient 
system of production or an order that will be se- 
cure from the danger of revolution. It is to be 
noted that this particular modification would not 
mean the abolition of private ownership. The 
instruments of production would still be owned 
by individuals, not by the state." 

The Protestant Church owes, and democratic 
nations in general owe more to the Roman Cath- 
olic Church than is always recognized. Protes- 
tantism, in maintaining the democratic right of 
schism for centuries lost the international and in- 
ter-racial ideal which was as essential to the Gos- 
pel as was the spirit of democracy. It still re- 
mains for Protestantism to recognize this lo^s in 
any whole-hearted way and to bring forth fruits 
meet for repentance. Protestantism is more 
democratic than Catholicism but it is far less in- 
ternational and inter-racial. There is no Prot- 
estant Church organization which can fairly claim 
to be international or inter-racial except in a most 
limited degree. Even Protestant systems like 
Presbyterianism, Congregationalism and Metho- 



CHRISTIANITY 77 

dism are divided by national boundaries and often 
change their names in different countries. 

If the ecclesiastical Right of Christendom would 
write over its doors the motto mentioned in the 
preceding chapter— THIS CHURCH EXISTS 
THAT THE WORLD MAY BE FREE— it would 
be compelled by logic to alter its internal organ- 
ization, while if the ecclesiastical Left were to 
adopt a similar slogan it would at once be com- 
pelled to revise its external relations and pur- 
poses, in a word, to become catholic. 

V 

THE CHUBCH AND INTERNATIONALISM 

It is idle to discuss the possible contribution of 
North American Protestantism to a new world or- 
der until this fact is clearly recognized. The 
Protestant Church has been accused of having 
*'one doctrine for the rich and another doctrine 
for the poor." This has sometimes been true of 
individual churches and even of denominations, 
but the only place where such a double-code sur- 
vives the appeal to awakened conscience is in its 
application to the man with a black or tinted skin 
who happened to be born or whose ancestors were 
born in Africa or Asia. The doctrine does sur- 
vive, or has survived, in the hearts of most Prot- 
estant believers. It is even more vigorous among 
those radical critics who charge the church with 
having failed to recognize and to fight for de- 



78 A BETTER WORLD 

mocracy. The international Socialist who wishes 
to plant Socialism in Japan is the last to recog- 
nize that it is equally desirable to plant Chris- 
tianity there also. 

But Protestantism still further limits its scope 
by assuming, generally speaking, that an indi- 
vidual denomination cannot, or ought not to cross 
national boundaries. The intense nationalism 
which the war has stimulated and promoted re- 
veals the outline of this fact with startling clear- 
ness. Any denomination with a German origin 
which has retained close spiritual affinity with 
the land of its birth has met with most serious 
obstacles in the United States in the last two 
years. Do we forget that if Scotland had been 
on the side of the Central Powers the Presbyteri- 
ans might have been in the same case? At the 
time of the American Revolution the Anglican 
Church in America went through a similar pe- 
riod of conflict. The war however has revealed 
how very important for the promotion of interna- 
tional amity is the intimate relation between those 
very churches which have shut themselves up be- 
hind national frontiers. If it was useful in sus- 
taining the war to create these numerous ecclesi- 
astical and religious visiting deputations, why is 
it not equally useful to maintain similar fraternal 
relations for the sustaining of the peace? If 
these agencies were so valuable that governments 
spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on them 
during the war, why would they not be equally 



CHEISTIANITY 79 

valuable in the future in putting bridges across 
the Pacific and Mediterranean as well as the At- 
lantic? 

The prejudices which thus limit Protestantism 
and restrain it from crossing national and racial 
boundaries rest on logical absurdity. Aside from 
the fact that Christ claimed exclusive and abso- 
lute authority in religious matters and that every 
creed contains acknowledgments of this author- 
ity, there is a practical dilemma. If Christian 
faith is the final and exclusive faith, then it is 
just as important for every other human creature 
as it is for me, and if it is not the absolute faith, 
then I am impelled by my own moral integrity to 
find a better one. 

A religious faith which ceases to be missionary 
and ceases in its efforts to convert the world to 
its beliefs, has ceased to have a fine regard for 
truth itself — a negation of religious conviction. 
When a church ceases to present its case for judg- 
ment in the court of public opinion, whether the 
court is white, yellow or black, it has either lost 
faith in its own claims or it has lost faith in de- 
mocracy. It must either argue that its faith is 
so superior that another nation or race is too in- 
ferior to appreciate it, or the faith is too inferior 
to make an appeal. Lest someone may reply that 
I am offering an out-worn argument which broke 
down when religious warfare became discredited 
centuries ago, it ought to be added that Chris- 
tianity violates itself when it ceases to try its 



80 A BETTER WOELD 

case by any method save that of an appeal to the 
facts of personal and social experience and to the 
conscience. 

Not long ago a Spanish university student was 
lecturing to some peasants on the theory of So- 
cialism when one of them interrupted him to ex- 
claim: *'We don't want theory: we want bread 
and dynamite.'' Possibly someone is moved to 
interrupt this discussion to exclaim that he wishes 
a little less theory and more facts to prove that 
Christianity actually does create and nourish the 
democratic spirit. Some of the most convincing 
and indisputable facts are to be gathered,, 
strangely enough, from Asia, from Korea, China 
and India. These facts have a certain advantage 
for study in that they can be more easily isolated 
than can the facts about the influence of the 
church in American democracy. 

VI 

THE GERM OF DEMOCRACY 

I have in mind a village in Northern India. 
The village contains three main sections, Mo- 
hammedan, Hindu and ' ' untouchable. ' ' The ^ ' un- 
touchables" of India, of whom there are perhaps 
fifty million, about one-sixth of the population, 
are Hindu outcasts who, although excluded from 
the castes, are practically a caste, or a group of 
castes, by themselves. Their name suggests their 
relation to the Hindu social order. They are not 



CHKISTIANITY 81 

only not to be touched by the caste people, but 
usually they are compelled even so to order their 
lives, their goings-out and their comings-in, that 
their shadows shall not fall across the sacred per- 
sons of caste people. Their relation to the social 
order necessitates, of course, their living in a sepa- 
rate section of the village. 

It so happened that some of these '* untouch- 
ables ' ^ in this village heard from some * ^ untouch- 
ables ' ' in a near-by village about Christianity, as 
it was being preached by an American mission- 
ary in a neighboring market town. They sent to 
the missionary and asked for a teacher. The 
teacher came, opened a school for them and their 
children, conducted preaching services, and 
started a singing-class in which Christian hymns 
were sung to old Indian tunes. By thus fitting 
words and music together. Christian doctrines 
were taught to the illiterate and those too old to 
learn to read. In time the entire village of ** un- 
touchables" decided that they wished to become 
Christian. The missionary came, examined the 
candidates, with the help of the teacher and the 
village council of elders, such as persists from 
patriarchal times in many Indian villages, and 
the people were baptized. 

A year later I visited the village in company 
with the missionary. The leaven had begun to 
work. The headman of the Hindu caste section 
of the village was waiting for the missionary. 
The headman was very angry. Last week his 



82 A BETTER WORLD 

cow had died. According to Hindu religion lie 
could not touch the cow carcass but the hide was 
valuable. According to the same Hindu code it 
was the duty of the ^^ untouchables'^ to skin the 
carcass in return for which they were allowed to 
retain the carrion for food. But the '^untouch- 
ables'' had now become Christians and when the 
headman's cow died they declined to remove the 
hide unless the headman would pay them for their 
labor in money. They did not eat carrion. They 
believed in the fatherhood of God and they be- 
lieved in the brotherhood of man. They believed 
that they were brothers together with the head- 
man himself. If carrion was not fit for him to 
eat it was unfit for them. No, they could not be 
moved by threats of the wrath of angry Hindu 
gods. They were Christians. Their deity was 
a Heavenly Father. He did not punish his chil- 
dren for refusing to eat carrion or for declining 
to work for no money. \ 

Not long afterwards I came to another village. 
The teacher whom the missionary had sent to in- 
struct the children and the young men not only 
in religion but in reading and in arithmetic had 
been so severely beaten by the caste people that 
he had spent ^ve weeks in a hospital. 

In short, Christianity, by introducing the 
Christian doctrine of the fatherhood of God into 
those villages, was stimulating a democratic as- 
piration which in turn was wrecking the whole 
^existing autocratic economic order. When the 



CHEISTIANITY 83 

'^iintoucliable'' discovered Ms equality before 
God he also discovered his equal rights before 
men. When he learned to read his Bible he also 
possessed enough knowledge to read the contracts 
which he was compelled to sign for the landlord 
and the money lender, and to figure his own ac- 
counts. 

Christianity, as taught by the Protestant mis» 
sionary, I care not how circumspectly he teaches 
it or how carefully he is watched and restrained 
by governments which fear the result, puts a di- 
vine discontent in the heart of the oppressed, and 
the learner and convert seldom fails to draw the 
logical political, economic and social conclusions 
from the faith in the fatherhood of God. **They 
(the missionaries) make bad the hearts of the peo- 
ple, and teach them democracy," said a Japanese 
newspaper recently in comment on the Korean 
revolutionary movement. But is not Protestant- 
ism merely repeating in the East the history of 
the West ? Where else has there been such a store- 
house of democratic idealism as the Bible ! Wher- 
ever the open Bible has gone and men have been 
free to read it, there political democracy is al- 
ready established unless the people are too in- 
dolent to claim it, and economic democracy is al- 
ready farthest advanced. 



84 A BETTER WOELD 

VII 
THE CHURCH DEFENDS BUT DOES IsTOT LEAD 

The clinrches of Christ all but floundered suc- 
cessively on the rocks of paganism and supersti- 
tion, temporal power and class privilege, national 
and racial prejudice. They survived the second 
vi^reck because of the inherent democratic spirit 
of the Gospel; they can survive the third wreck 
for a similar reason, and the most certain way 
to free Christianity of what degree of paganism 
and superstition it has acquired is to put it into 
the freest possible contact with pagan religions, 
that is to say, by still further extending its demo- 
cratic principles. If what I have is good for me 
it is equally good for the other man, and if in of- 
fering it to him I discover that my truth is mixed 
with error, then mine is the gain as well as his. 

Christianity has made all its advances from the 
days of its beginning by appealing first to the 
*^ under dogs.'' Or, if you will, while the chal- 
lenge of faith has been uniformly to all classes it 
has usually been those lowest in the social and 
economic order who have made the first response. 
At any rate Christianity has gathered its first re- 
cruits for every advance from among unprivi- 
leged classes. As the new form of faith has made 
its way up through the various levels of social 
strata, often carrying with it the class in which 
it had its beginning, it has released a new demo- 
cratic spirit approximating, more nearly than the 



CHEISTIANITY 85 

old order which was being changed, a real hu- 
man brotherhood. This new order, in turn, re- 
ceived a certain moral sanction from the religious 
institutions which were contributing so largely 
to the change. Christian faith has always been 
creative, modifying and changing the world as it 
found it ; organized Christianity, the Church which 
eventually grew out of the faith, has, like all or- 
ganizations, been more a conserving than a creat- 
ing influence. It has held the advance which faith 
has achieved, but as an institution it has not been 
marked by the spirit of adventure or of initia- 
tive. But even organized Christianity which cast 
out its prophets and stoned them has been the 
great conservator of the victories they have won. 

The Church, like the League of Nations, repre- 
sents an average. Its spirit and purpose are only 
the average of the spirit and purpose of its mem- 
bers. While this average is considerably higher 
than the spirit of one part of the constituency it 
is also very much lower than the spirit and pur- 
pose of the most sensitive consciences and best in- 
formed minds within its circle. 

American Protestantism has reached a phase in 
its development where the spirit of initiative and 
adventure is greatly in demand. But the larger 
the body the greater the inertia, and American 
Protestantism is very large, comprising twenty- 
five million souls. There are two methods by 
which to gauge the utility of this immense group 
of people in advancing the cause of democracy 



S6 A BETTER WOELD 

both at home and abroad. Such a vast mass of 
people will not and cannot develop initiative. 
They are like an army, and an army, strictly 
speaking, never takes the initiative. An army ac- 
cepts leadership and the leadership takes the 
initiative. If one sets up as a standard the often- 
repeated demand, ^^ the leadership of the Church,'' 
then one will find the Church sadly deficient as a 
leader of the new democracy. The Church does 
not lead, cannot lead, and collectively, it repre- 
sents a vast amount of inertia which may be mis- 
taken for opposition to anything new. 

On the other hand, one may regard this huge 
mass of people as a collection of voluntary as- 
sociations in which the spirit of liberty runs very 
high, and in which awakened conscience is the 
strongest bond of union. Considered as such the 
churches must be regarded as a tremendous asset 
for any forward movement which rests on moral 
principles. 

vin 

INTERNATIONAL CHRISTIANITY AND THE LEAGUE OF 

NATIONS 

The League of Nations is the projection of a 
great moral ideal. It comes as an answer to the 
dumb longings of inarticulate humanity for free- 
dom and liberty. Its charter is disappointing be- 
cause it stops so far short of the ideal. So also is 
the Christian church disappointing. 

The Christian Church is not yet entirely Chris- 



CHEISTIANITY 87 

tian. We have frankly to recognize that no sec- 
tion of it has completely appropriated the Chris- 
tian ideal either of faith or of practice. The 
Protestant churches in particular have been de- 
ficient in that they have failed to apply the demo- 
cratic ideal internationally and inter-racially 
with any marked enthusiasm. But the fact re- 
mains that the Christian Church does possess the 
ideal, and if all the world had reached the level 
of moral attainment already achieved by the 
Church a real Commonwealth of the States of 
the World could be inaugurated tomorrow. Of 
no other institution or organization may this 
claim be made. The Christian Church is unique. 
Is it not clear, then, that the greatest asset which 
the world today possesses for making effective 
the League of Nations, for keeping it from de- 
generating into another Holy Alliance, for con- 
stantly lifting the moral average of its constitu- 
ent parts, and for preparing the nations and 
races not now included for membership, is the 
spirit of Christianity, and the organization of the 
Church? 

In the following chapters it will be our purpose 
to analyze still further the resources of the Chris- 
tian faith and the religious organizations of the 
world for this broad purpose. We must study 
them not merely in the light of their pre-war his- 
tory and functions but also in the light of how the 
war has affected their operation and influence. 
We may divide this subject into three parts : Eu- 



88 A BETTER WORLD 

rope, the war and religion; Christianity in the 
non-Christian races, with special reference to 
Asia ; and American Christianity as related to the 
new world order. 



CHAPTER TV 
EUEOPE, THE WAE AND EELIGION 

I 

THE KELAXING OF KESTRAINT 

It is, of course, much too soon for exact state- 
ment. The spiritual chaos of Europe was in- 
creased rather than diminished by the signing 
of the Armistice. The relaxing of the strain of 
the war, the loosening of military and government 
discipline and the beginning of demobilization re- 
leased the souls of men to a freedom which they 
had not known for years. We do not know, we 
dare not guess, how this return to freedom will 
affect the voluntary association of the European 
peoples in religious organizations or how the new 
ideals which the war has stimulated in the com- 
mon mind will influence religious convictions. 
Probably ideas will travel much more rapidly 
than they did after the French Eevolution, owing 
to the higher literacy of the masses and the greater 
facilities for communication. Nevertheless, years 
must elapse before we can chart accurately the 
new currents. On the other hand, there are some 
facts already clear. 
For convenience in thinking we may accept a 

89 



90 A BETTER WOELD 

primary classification which was already becom- 
ing necessary even before the war. We mnst dis- 
tinguish between religion and ecclesiastical or- 
ganization. At the present moment it appears as 
though the immediate effect of the war had been 
to strengthen the church as an organization, at 
least in all the Allied and in many of the neutral 
countries, but at the same time there seems to 
have been a weakening of religious convictions 
and a cooling of spiritual fervor. 

n 

THE MOEAL DEVASTATIOIT OF THE WAR 

The war did not reveal itself as a spiritualizing 
force. We may hold to this conclusion even after 
taking into account all the heroism and the noble 
sentiment which it inspired and sustained. A dis- 
tinguished French religious leader said to me: 
*^The war has illustrated the truth of the saying 
that Ho him that hath shall be given.' Those who 
went into the war with lofty moral and religious 
convictions came out of the conflict with those 
ideals increased. Those who entered the war 
without such convictions came back with even 
less than they had when they entered.'' There 
were few revivals in the trenches. The atmos- 
phere of military discipline and of the army camp 
is not favorable to the quickening of moral or 
spiritual sense. Soldiers going through a bay- 
onet drill of three movements in which they are 



EUEOPE, THE WAE AND EELIGION 91 

instructed to yell in unison, with accent synchro- 
nized to the motions, ^^God — Damn — You," ren- 
dered a glorious account when they hurled them- 
selves down into an enemy trench, but there was 
little in such a drill to feed the spiritual hunger 
of home-sick souls. 

Most people have drawn their conclusions as 
to the spiritual stimulus of the war from such 
choice spirits as Donald Hankey. Such men were 
among those who *'had'' when they entered the 
trenches. Those who ^'had less" and lost even 
the little they did possess were not articulate, but 
in appraising the net spiritual effects of the war 
this latter larger class must also be considered. 

**Some of your countrymen came over here 
early in the war," continued the French gentle- 
man quoted above, ^ ' and went back reporting that 
all Europe was on its knees. They had merely 
gone into a few Paris churches and seen them full. 
It is estimated that in peace times about three 
per cent of the population of Paris attended 
church on Sunday as compared with twenty per 
cent of the population of Switzerland and thirty 
per cent in England. Supposing that as much as 
six per cent of the people of Paris went to church 
at the beginning of the war. That does not indi- 
cate a revival, does it! 

*^The army reeked with filth as all armies do," 
continued this gentleman, and he occupied an ex- 
ceptionally favorable position for observation, 
^^and the blight of this corruption spread every- 



92 A BETTER WORLD 

where." He who writes the chronicle of this 
phase of the European war has before him a dis- 
agreeable and thankless task. What he writes will 
not be pleasant reading, and the facts themselves 
might better be left unrecorded were it not that 
the demand for conscription and compulsory mili- 
tary training dies hard. Militarism is a nasty, 
filthy, stinking thing in spite of all the nobility 
which it enlists. The war has set loose in Eu- 
rope demoralizing influences which will remain to 
corrupt even to the third and fourth generation. 
War is de spiritualizing to every human relation. 
The following paragraph taken from an article 
by W. J. Rose, of the World's Christian Student 
Federation, who spent the years of the war in far- 
off forgotten Silesia, Austrian Poland, gives one 
a glimpse of this influence as viewed from behind 
the German lines. The article appeared in The 
New Statesman (London), February 1, 1919. 
'^The complete collapse of the one-time fabric of 
morals is nowhere to be studied better than in the 
domestic relations ; but one must be prepared for 
no end of tragic discoveries. It is not alone that 
neither husband nor wife has been expected, where 
the rank and file even of educated men are con- 
cerned, to be true to one another; that has, of 
course, brought the breaking-up of untold thou- 
sands of homes. But the fact is this : the emanci- 
pation of women has become a fact, under condi- 
tions which beggar description. Man away, wife 
takes charge of the farm, or trade, or calling. She 



EUROPE, THE WAE AND RELIGION 93 

has a new freedom, has money where she never 
had it before;, learns how to manage, and finds 
pleasure in it. Or if she is incompetent, lets 
everything go to the dogs. In either case she 
doesn 't want her husband home in a hurry. How 
often have I heard women say, ^Ach, wait till the 
men come home ; then the war will begin ! ' " 

If this emancipation of European women had 
been accompanied by the development of cor- 
respondingly vigorous ideals one might find here 
a compensation for the war, but alas! such was 
not the case. And can anything compensate for 
the corruption of venereal disease which the last 
five years have spread through Europe? 

Mr. Rose goes on to say: *^When one realizes 
how the men have been debauched, how their sense 
of self-respect, among such as had it, was tram- 
pled on; how the children ran wild in the days 
when the schools were full of soldiers, or the 
teachers were serving at the front; in general 
how a grim fatalism came over one and all, which 
often gave rise to the uttered conviction that the 
war never will end, that the earth has fallen on 
evil days to last indefinitely — one sees that a state 
of mind was reached where the negation of all 
moral sanctions was bound to come, and nihilism 
as a theory should pass into nihilism in prac- 
tice." 

Such vivid description of moral chaos was only 
a little less true of one European country than 
of another during the war. One makes the state- 



94 A BETTER WORLD 

ment reluctantly, not to ^x individual responsi- 
bility, for such an attempt would be grotesque and 
contemptible, but merely in order that one may 
fairly face the stubborn fact which has to be con- 
sidered in any moral stock-taking for the future. 
One may enumerate the exceptions without limit 
and yet the bare fact stands out that the war has 
corrupted European life, physical and intellec- 
tual as well as spiritual. The demoralization 
through life in military camps has been hardly 
less than the more subtle corruption of logical 
thought and generous sentiments among the very 
men and women at home to whom the various na- 
tions looked for moral leadership and spiritual 
guidance. This latter statement also stands in 
spite of the numberless exceptions which may be 
adduced of those who refused to offer this last 
tribute of supposed patriotic devotion. 

ni 

OTHEE LOSSES TO THE CHURCH 

In the early months of the war I happened to be 
spending some days in one of the famous univer- 
sity towns of Europe where I had opportunities 
to study the first reactions of the war on an aca- 
demic group. One day I fell into conversation 
with a professor of Church History on the Chris- 
tian aspects of the conflict. I was especially in- 
terested by the ingenious logic which he applied 
to the facts as we then understood them. The 



EUROPE, THE WAR AND RELIGION 95 

argument was substantially as follows : The war 
appears to be primarily one for the defence of the 
principle of nationality. It is difficult to find an 
explicit justification for war in the teachings of 
Jesus but one must remember that ethics as taught 
by Jesus were always related to His expectation 
of an early ending of the world. Jesus did not 
include in His teaching any doctrine of nationality 
because He seemed to foresee in the near future 
the cataclysmic end of all mundane things. But 
the world did not come to an end as Jesus had 
evidently expected that it would, and in the Provi- 
dence of God the conception of nationality became 
one of the most potent means by which the King- 
dom of God was actually extended over Europe 
and throughout the world. Doubtless if Jesus had 
foreseen the development of the following cen- 
turies he would have included in His gospel more 
explicit teaching with reference to the rights of 
nationalities. 

At the outbreak of the war there was unques- 
tionably a certain amount of quickening of the 
religious life of all the warring nations. Church 
services were more frequent and better attended 
than in former times. People came to the 
churches both for assurance and for instruction. 
The war was a stupendous fact which the mind 
could not apprehend; it was demanding hazards 
and sacrifices which the heart made reluctantly. 
In the face of inexplicable mysteries souls cried 
out to God and sought a social refuge from the 



96 A BETTEK WOELD 

solitude of doubt and then of bereavement. This 
first wave of emotion did not for long sustain it- 
self in the form of its original expression. Faith 
often drifted into grim fatalism and the search 
for assurances of immortality led to study of the 
occult. 

* ' There is no doubt but that the war has made 
many people very thoughtful on religious sub- 
jects," said an Oxford professor to me the other 
day, speaking of present religious conditions in 
England, ^^but the most noticeable expression of 
this new interest in religion is an increase of su- 
perstition and the new popularity of spiritualism. 
The two big questions which have been raised are 
about prayer and immortality. Almost every cot- 
tage in England is now a monument to unanswered 
prayer and every home is searching for assur- 
ances of immortality. No one knows how deeply 
the plowman is thinking about these subjects 
which are supposed to interest only the educated 
people. On the other hand the habit of church- 
going has been broken by the necessity for seven- 
day labor in the war industries and such habits 
are not easily remade.'' 

A few days later in Paris I asked the cure of 
one of the largest Eoman Catholic parishes how 
the war had affected religion as he observed the 
situation. Did more people actually attend his 
church than before the war? ^^No,'' he replied, 
^'more people do not come to my church for I am 
in an industrial district, but this is easily ex- 



EUEOPE, THE WAE AND KELIGION 97 

plained. Before the war I had eight assistants. 
Seven of them went into the army either as chap- 
lains or as soldiers, and the man who remained 
with me would have gone also but for the fact that 
he was a semi-invalid. It was impossible to care 
properly for the parish with so little help. And 
then you must remember that Socialism is very 
strong in such a parish as mine. The Socialist 
newspapers which are always abusing the Church 
circulate everywhere. You ought to come out 
there and see the crowds in the street with the 
newsboys crying ^Le Populaire! Le Populaire!' 
(one of the Paris Socialist newspapers) above the 
noise of the crowd. But I know of one parish in 
Paris where the number of confessions has in- 
creased from 125,000 a year to nearly 300,000 dur- 
ing the war.'' 

Indeed, one may set. down as another great ad- 
verse effect of the war on religion in Europe, by 
the side of its de spiritualizing influence on its 
inhibitions of logical thinking, the actual losses 
in both men and property and income which all 
religious organizations have sustained. 

Between twenty-five and thirty thousand 
French priests and students were mobilized and 
nearly half of the total Protestant ministry. The 
increasing strain of the war subtracted more and 
more men, old as well as young, from the service 
of the churches and proportionately diminished 
the financial resources by which the church work 
had been sustained. The signing of the Armis- 



98 A BETTER WORLD 

tice left the churches of every creed weakened, as 
compared with the beginning of the war, by huge 
losses of men, both clerical and lay, diminished 
resources and reduced incomes, and in the war 
areas still further weakened by the actual destruc- 
tion of property and the disruption of parishes. 
Thus at the very time when the religious organ- 
izations ought to have been prepared for the im- 
mediate adoption of new programs and the im- 
mediate launching of new enterprises their per- 
sonal and physical vitality was at its lowest point. 
At the same time the training for the ministry 
and the priesthood had been almost completely 
suspended for four years and the reinforcements 
so greatly needed to fill the depleted ranks of the 
clergy are not only not at hand but are not even 
in training. 

rv 

CHURCH AND STATE 

In spite of these losses in personnel both lay 
and clerical, and in spite of the losses in prop- 
erty and in diminished physical resources, both 
of which must weaken the Church at least tem- 
porarily, I believe that the churches have made 
compensating gains as organizations. There are, 
however, exceptions to this general statement 
which are mentioned below. 

All religious organizations took on a new im- 
portance in the eyes of government shortly after 
the war began. The churches, like the press, of- 



EUEOPE, THE WAE AND EELIGION 99 

fered direct and open channels for commnnicat- 
ing with the people, for stimulating patriotism, 
and for education in war aims. They also of- 
fered exceptional facilities, through existing fra- 
ternal relations with the religious groups in other 
countries, for international propaganda. 

One may note in this connection that this com- 
plete enlistment of the Church in the service of 
the State marked a new phase in the historical 
struggle between the two. Once the supremacy 
of the Church over the State was unquestioned; 
then came the conflicts resulting in a general ten- 
dency toward the separation of the two, and as 
the States gained the ascendancy, the establish- 
ment of Free Churches. The last five years in 
Europe have been marked by the absolute su- 
premacy of the State over the Church. The for- 
tunes of the one as an organization have thus been 
almost inseparably bound up with the fortunes of 
the other. The withholding of information by the 
governments has made it impossible for the re- 
ligious leaders of the various countries to frame 
any moral judgments except those which the gov- 
ernments wished to have framed. The moral 
leadership of the Church has therefore been con- 
fined to the giving of moral support to the moral 
leadership which the State has assumed. This 
holy alliance which really began long before the 
outbreak of the war has already cost the Eussian 
Orthodox Church practically all that it possessed 
and it would appear that the fortunes of those 



100 A BETTER WORLD 

ecclesiastical organizations both Catholic and 
Protestant which lent their services in the interest 
of the German State are now very closely tied np 
with a cause which has been defeated and with a 
moral leadership which has passed even among 
its own peoples. 

On the other hand, the fruits of the Allied vic- 
tory have been shared by the ecclesiastical organ- 
izations of the Allied countries. This is particu- 
larly evident in France. At the outbreak of the 
war the government ignored the Church both 
Catholic and Protestant. There were not even 
chaplains for the army, but the government 
quickly saw the mistake and appointed a Catholic 
chaplain for each regiment and a Protestant for 
each brigade. These chaplains, as well as the 
clergy who served in the ranks, have often made 
brilliant records, and it is not unusual to see a 
cure or pastor with his decoration proudly worn 
striding down the streets of a French city. The 
mingling of the clergy and the laity in the army 
was good for both and did much to reestablish 
friendly relations which had been almost sus- 
pended between the Church and the masses. The 
Catholic Church particularly gained a great deal 
of prestige and influence among the soldiers not 
only by the personal contact of the priests but 
also by the grand and stately services, flags wav- 
ing, drums beating and officers in attendance. 

Meanwhile the government was appealing di- 
rectly to the people through the clergy to surren- 



EUEOPE, THE WAE AND EELIGION 101 

der their hoarded gold and to support the other 
vital measures touching the concerns of civilian 
life. This service also was most effective and was 
greatly appreciated. In the invaded districts it 
was often the cure and the pastor who were the 
last to leave, if indeed they left at all, and many 
are the stories of clerical heroism in the devas- 
tated areas which are being retold throughout 
France. Again the churches were useful as relief 
organizations and in caring for orphans and war 
victims. The relief funds which were contributed 
in America were often administered through the 
churches greatly to the profit not only of those 
who received the help but also of those who gave 
it. Again, the Union Sacree in which all the de- 
nominations joined at the beginning of the war 
not only put a stop to wranglings but actually 
brought the various sects together on a more 
friendly basis than had hitherto existed. 

Likewise the war greatly promoted friendly re- 
lationships between the churches of the different 
nations. The facilities for travel and for the 
sending of literature provided by the governments 
made possible such an interchange of thought and 
sympathy as will be of inestimable benefit not 
only to the churches but also to friendly interna- 
tional relations of the future. Today there is a 
more lively sense of kinship and sympathy be- 
tween the churches of the various Allied nations 
than ever existed before, although international 
ecclesiastical organization has not been advanced. 



102 A BETTER WORLD 

It is more than likely that the churches will share 
with the various Socialist groups the first respon- 
sibilities in the ministry of reconciliation with the 
peoples of the nations with whom the Alhes have 
been at war. 



THE PKECAKIOUS PKESENT 

A brief tabulation of the pre-war religious 
forces of Europe related to some of the great out- 
standing facts of the war will show at once that 
the condition of organized religion in Europe is, 
in spite of the gains, very precarious. 

The Russian Orthodox Church went down to 
defeat in the fall of the old political and economic 
order with which it was allied. If it ever returns 
to a place of influence in Russia it is evident that 
it will come back as a democratized, disestab- 
lished, free church. Even assuming that highly 
improbable event of a reestablishment of an ab- 
solute monarchy in Russia it is clear that even a 
despot could not restore a discredited church to 
the reverence and affection of the masses. 

The State Churches in the Central Powers have 
seriously suffered in the defeat of the governments 
to which they were joined. The restoration of 
their leadership also lies along the line of democ- 
ratization and disestablishment. The reluctance 
of Germany to disestablish the church indicates 
how much inertia and reaction has been carried 
over from the old order. Five hundred Catholic 



EUEOPE, THE WAE AND EELIGION 103 

clergy of Czecho-Slovakia recently gathered in 
Prague and decided that hereafter the bishops 
shall be nominated directly by the joint action of 
the clergy and the people; that the Slav rather 
than the Latin language shall be used in the 
church services; compulsory celibacy for both 
priests and bishops should be abolished. More 
than seven hundred other members of the clergy 
also gave their approval to these reforms. Such 
decisions as well as the logic of the correlated 
events look toward measures of ecclesiastical de- 
mocracy and religious liberty hitherto unknown 
in these regions. 

The Roman Catholic Church appears to have 
come out of the war in better shape than many 
of her critics predicted. Her gains in France and 
Belgium are undoubted and may go far toward 
compensating for immediate losses in Austria and 
the East. The Allied victory cost the Spanish 
church a certain loss of prestige, but the Church 
is still well entrenched in the Peninsula. Not long 
ago I asked a radical Socialist in Madrid this ques- 
tion: ^*In case Spain were to have a revolution 
or were to establish a republic do you think that 
the Catholic Church would be disestablished?'^ 

**I hardly think we would go as far as that/' 
he replied, soberly, ^^ although we would most cer- 
tainly secularize the cemeteries and establish ab- 
solute rehgious freedom." 

The questionable loyalty of the Vatican to the 
cause of the Allies has not been forgotten in Italy, 



104 A BETTER WOELD 

and one hears of more discontent with the Chnrch 
there than in Spain or France. The matter of 
the taxation of Chnrch lands is being mnch dis- 
cussed in view of the increasingly high taxes which 
the masses are called upon to pay. If the often 
promised revolution comes in Italy the Church is 
in for some more losses. The Vatican has re- 
cently approved of the organization of a Church 
political party in which priests can run for po- 
litical offices. 

When I asked a French cure whether the al- 
leged pro-German sympathies of the Vatican were 
going to affect the influence of the Catholic Church 
in France, he replied by pointing out that if the 
Vatican had inclined toward Germany and Aus- 
tria, it was to be explained on the ground that 
Germany has maintained the most intimate diplo- 
matic relations with the Vatican before the war 
whereas France has declined to have such rela- 
tions. He is hopeful that the return of peace will 
bring about the establishment of a French Ambas- 
sador at the Vatican. 

The Free Protestant Churches of the Allied 
countries do not appear to have suffered as or- 
ganizations from the war, sharing rather, as has 
been indicated, in the fruits of victory. French 
Protestantism has been reinforced by the addition 
of enough Alsatian Protestants to bring its total 
numerical strength up to at least a million. Prot- 
estants have not failed to utilize the cause of 
President Wilson's popularity among the masses 



EUKOPE, THE WAR AND RELIGION 105 

by drawing attention to the fact that he is a Prot- 
estant. Before me lies a Spanish newspaper, in 
which a raessage of President Wilson to Germany 
is featured on the front page with a two column 
head, and on turning over the page my eye falls 
on a two column advertisement inserted by the 
British Bible Society featuring the commendation 
of the Bible which President Wilson wrote for 
the fly-leaf of the American soldiers' Bibles. But 
Protestantism which was so closely allied with 
government in Northern Europe has shared in the 
defeat of the order it defended. 



VI 

ETJKOPEAN- CHRISTIAlsriTY AND THE 1>0PIILAB 

MOVEMENT 

As we list these various religious forces of the 
Continent and note the different conflicts which 
they are facing or have faced we see that the fate 
of the Church hangs not upon any thing which the 
war, now past, has done to it or for it, but rather 
upouriow the Church is going to meet these new 
forces which the closing of the war has released 
— the democratic and popular movements. The 
churches of Europe have been recognized as pow- 
erful factors in the direction and control of pub- 
lic opinion during the war and they are now rec- 
ognized as suitable bulwarks of order and con- 
servatism to be placed in front of the radical cur- 
rents now beginning to flow southward and west- 



106 A BETTER WORLD 

I 
ward over the Continent. The Church has imme- 
diately before her the choice between conserva- 
tism and liberalism as applied to politics and 
industry. The choice is not nnlike that which was 
offered to the Vatican between the Central and 
the Allied Powers. Those who feel that the sign- 
ing of the armistice was not the end of the strug- 
gle for democracy but the beginning of mighty ef- 
forts to establish real and effective popular gov- 
ernment throughout Europe, must, if they are at 
all concerned for the future of the present Euro- 
pean ecclesiastical organizations, regard this 
choice now presented to the Church as the most 
crucial test of many centuries. At the present 
time the Church is most secure among the women 
and among the members of the aristocratic and 
ruling classes. Already the Church has lost its 
grip on the mass of working men in every coun- 
try. They are firmly convinced that the Church 
is one of the great organs of reaction. The radi- 
cals do not seem to view the fact so much with bit- 
terness as with confidence that when the day ar- 
rives the Church will be so weak that it can be 
swept away with little effort. 

One of the most amusing as well as illustrative 
stories I have heard in Europe was in the Casa del 
Pueblo, the office and club of the Radicals of 
Madrid. A woman, the wife of a working man, 
was commenting on her recent change of atti- 
tude toward the Church. *'When our first babies 
came,'' she said, '^I wanted them to be baptized. 



EUROPE, THE WAR AND RELIGION 107 

My husband did not believe in it and used to make 
fun of the high charges which the priests made 
for baptism but he always consented, because he 
thought it would make me feel better. But by 
the time the last baby came I had seen the light. 
I did not have her baptized, but we named her 
*Fratemidad' (Brotherhood)." 

Almost from the first moment when one begins 
to discuss the Church with any European it be- 
comes evident that the content of the word is very 
different in Europe from what it is in America. 
To most Europeans the Church is an institution 
which has an ax to grind rather than a service to 
render to the people. On the one hand it has 
been made the agent of the State for the suppres- 
sion of nationalities and the extension of political 
influence and on the other hand, it has been the 
organ of a hierarchy which sought to thwart pop- 
ular movements. The content of the word as we 
have it in America, where a State Church has not 
been permitted to exist, — where religious freedom 
is sure, and where no sect or denomination is su- 
preme, is all but unknown. A French lady asked 
me not long ago, ^^ Just what is the Y.M.C.A. in 
America? What does it do in peace times?" I 
thought the question could be most easily an- 
swered by sketching the history of the origin of 
the organization. I spoke of the little group of 
drapers' clerks gathering for a prayer-meeting, 
and then I paused, wondering whether she knew 



108 A BETTER WOELD 

what a prayer-meeting is. *^Mais oui,'' she re- 
plied, *^c'est confessional.'' 

I have heard one man intimately familiar with 
religious conditions in one large section of Eu- 
rope state that before any spiritual religious or- 
ganization can establish itself there it will be nec- 
essary for it to discard every term, even the name 
of Christ itself, which has been carried over from 
traditional Christianity. The traditional Chris- 
tian terminology, in his judgment, is so abso- 
lutely identified with unchristian practices that 
to retain it would be like trying to discuss a color 
scheme with a man who is firmly convinced that 
red is blue and brown is green. 

VII 
INFLUENCE OP AMEKICAN CHEISTIANITY 

In view of present unsettled religious condi- 
tions on the Continent the entrance of American 
Christianity into Europe in force in the immedi- 
ate future must be watched with great interest. 
The Methodist Episcopal Church and the Metho- 
dist Episcopal Church South already have plans 
which call for the spending of more than $15,000,- 
000 within the next five years for the establish- 
ment of new Protestant churches and social serv- 
ice institutions, and also for the assistance of ex- 
isting Protestant organizations. Other Protes- 
tant bodies are planning similar enterprises 
though on a less expensive scale. These organiza- 



EUEOPE, THE WAE AND RELIGION 109 

tions will take with them the traditions of a con- 
servative yet democratic country, a definition of 
the Church which is now practically unknown in 
the larger part of Europe, a passion for the ex- 
pression of Christianity in social service and a 
demand for complete religious liberty. A deter- 
mined effort will unquestionably be made to build 
up a new Protestantism in the countries in which 
the old Protestantism was so nearly destroyed by 
the Inquisition, and to establish a new type of 
Christianity among peoples where the very Gos- 
pel itself has been discredited by its older ec- 
clesiastical expressions. American Christianity in 
going to the Continent will not, however, escape 
the same choice which is now before the churches 
of Europe between reaction and liberalism in poli- 
tics and industry. In the estimation of Europe 
this choice will transcend in importance all ques- 
tions of dogma, creed or polity. 

Every indication of present conditions is that 
the future of religion in Europe lies with churches 
which have been disestablished from all control 
by the state, and which have drunk deep from 
the springs of democratic inspiration — the teach- 
ings of Jesus. One may remember also that from 
the beginning of Christian history until now the 
first phase in the history of any new Christian 
movement has always been intensely democratic 
and even radical. 

It can easily be seen that the war has left the 
European Churches very ill prepared to make 



110 A BETTER WORLD 

any immediate notable material contribntions to 
the cause of world-wide Christian democracy. 
Broadly speaking, it seems as though the net re- 
ligious idealism of Europe had been diminished 
and the financial resources of the churches have 
suffered even more. We may count very little 
on the help of organized European Christianity 
in sustaining the League of Nations as a ^'living 
thing/' and we can count very little on it for cre- 
ating and nourishing in the non-Christian world 
that moral and spiritual idealism which makes 
possible an extension of the principle of govern- 
ment by the consent of the governed. 

For the present the burden of extending Chris- 
tian democracy in the world falls almost entirely 
on Great Britain and the United States. Hap- 
pily British Christianity has come through the 
war less weakened than her Continental sister, 
and there are already signs of a new and prom- 
ising vitality. But the bulk both of ideas and* 
funds for the extension of Christian democracy 
in Asia, Africa and South America will come, for 
the next generation, if they come at all, from those 
twenty-six millions of Americans who are the 
Protestant Church of the United States and 
Canada. 



CHAPTER Y 

CHRISTIANITY AND THE NON-CHRISTIAN 

RACES 

I 

ASSETS AND LIABILITIES 

The religious resources of the non-Christian 
world for sustaining an effective and adaptable 
League of Nations — is not this a fair topic for 
discussion! Surely we do not wish to assume that 
the non-Christian world is forever to be a dead 
weight on human progress, or on the extension of 
stable democratic institutions. And if Asia and 
Africa are some day to be counted as assets for 
democracy, instead of as liabilities, their religious 
resources are worth considering. 

But in order that we may approach the subject 
with all the facts before us, let us return for a mo- 
ment to the discussion which was begun in Chap- 
ter Two, *^The League and a Changing World.'' 
Nations and races change in their relative political 
and economic power and importance ; governments 
rise and fall, and governments change. Religion 
also changes. 

Ill 



112 A BETTER WORLD 

II 

THE MAECH OF CHEISTIANITY 

At the beginning of the Christian Era the entire 
Western Hemisphere seems to have been inhab- 
ited by people who were animistic or pagan ; Eu- 
rope and Africa likewise were under crude pa- 
ganism, and only parts of Asia possessed highly 
developed and moralized faiths. Buddhism was 
just beginning to sweep across India and onward 
toward the East. A thousand years later, Europe 
had almost entirely changed its faith; Buddhism 
had begun to disappear from the land of its birth ; 
Mohammedanism had swept around the Mediter- 
ranean, invaded Europe from two sides, and 
firmly planted itself in Africa. Confucianism had 
become a tremendous force in the Far East, and 
Buddhism had reached Japan. 

In the next centuries the changes were even 
more rapid than in the earlier period. Today we 
find the Western Hemisphere almost entirely 
Christian, Europe wholly Christian, while Africa 
and Asia have experienced great changes. The 
Christian settlements in North Africa have sur- 
rendered to Islam, which is rapidly crowding down 
through the continent past the equator. Mean- 
while, Christianity has occupied South Africa and 
has crowded the primitive animism of the black 
man a thousand miles up from the Cape. The 
Christianity which in the apostolic age spread 
eastward from Palestine became lost for centu- 



THE NON-CHRISTIAN EACES 113 

ries, and fragments of it were discovered fifteen 
hundred years later on the west coast of India, 
where it persisted from the days of the Syrian 
migration. Buddhism has practically disappeared 
from the Indian peninsula, while the work of the 
early Spanish and Portuguese missionaries in the 
Far East has borne fruit in the largely Chris- 
tianized Philippine Islands. 

** Following the most recent authority," says 
Dr. Cornelius H. Patton in *' World Facts and 
America's Responsibility" (Association Press, 
New York) (Atlas-Hierarchus, 1913), ^Hhe dis- 
tribution of the world's population religiously is 
as follows : 

Population of the Globe 1,650,000,000 

Christians 635,250,000 38% 

Confucianists and Taoists 257,400,000 15.6% 

Hindus 222,750,000 13.5% 

Mohammedans 221,100.000 13.4% 

Buddhists 133,650,000 8.1% 

'Animists 100,650,000 6.1% 

Shintoists 52,800,000 3.2% 

Jews 11,550,000 .7% 

Unclassified 14,850,000 .9% 

Certainly there is little ground, after studying 
the above table, together with the religious map 
of the world in successive centuries, for the as- 
sumption that the religious boundaries of the 
world are fixed and insurmountable. 

The assumption that Christianity has no right 
to attempt to extend itself beyond the boundaries 
of those nations which are now nominally Chris- 
tian is a purely Protestant one. The Eoman 



114 A BETTEE WOELD 

Catholic Cliurch has never held it. Probably it 
could be traced back to those same nationalistic 
and racial prejudices which have done so much 
to prevent Protestantism from becoming in any 
large way an international faith. 

Those who hold these prejudices overlook the 
fact that the Founder of Christianity and those 
who first projected its ecclesiastical form upon the 
world did not belong to any western race. The 
membership of every Protestant Church is de- 
scended from racial stocks which were pagan for 
centuries after Christ. There is no fact more evi- 
dent in all history than the march of the Chris- 
tian Church across national and racial boundaries, 
one after another, until now, after nineteen cen- 
turies, Christianity claims no less than 635,250,000 
adherents under more than fifty different inde- 
pendent governments. 

Indeed Christianity has extended itself so 
widely and has modified to such a marked extent 
the stock of national ideals in many countries, 
and has likewise been so modified in many places 
by the national and racial ideals of the peoples 
among whom it has sent down its roots, that the 
terms *^ Christian" and ^^non-Christian" races are 
almost as relative and as little fixed as is the term 
^ ^backward" nations. No nation is absolutely 
** Christian"; some so-called Christian nations 
shade off into a borderland where they are hardly 
to be distinguished from some of their non-Chris- 
tian neighbors and races. 



THE NON-CHEISTIAN RACES 115 
III 

THE *'kEAE-CHEISTIAI5'S" 

The distinction between Christian and non- 
Christian nations and races is breaking down. 
Russia, whose Tsar only a century ago proposed 
to the King of Prussia and the Emperor of Aus- 
tria the Holy Alliance ^Ho take for their sole 
guide the precepts of that Holy Religion/^ would 
now officially disclaim that she is a Christian na- 
tion. On the other hand, non-Christian China 
was represented in the Peace Conference by one 
delegate who, when I wanted to go and see him 
one day in Peking two years ago, postponed the 
appointment in order that he might fulfill his en- 
gagement to teach a Bible class in a Chinese 
Christian Church. The African negroes of the 
world were represented in the Peace Conference 
by the Secretary of State from Liberia, an ardent 
Christian, while some of the most Christian na- 
tions sent to Paris delegates who were evidently 
frankly instructed, if they had any Christian prin- 
ciples as applied to other than their private lives, 
to leave them at home. 

While Christianity has never yet entirely cap- 
tured the governments of Christian nations, on 
the other hand, it is not now entirely excluded 
from shaping the policy of non-Christian nations. 

One of the largest undefined assets of the non- 
Christian races is what may be called their ^'near- 
Christians." The term may be challenged. 



116 A BETTER WOELD 

Christianity may be so defined as to rule it out, 
but there will still be a great many people in the 
world whose purposes and attitude toward life and 
social responsibility are characteristically Chris- 
tian, even though the people themselves do not 
subscribe to Christian dogma and cannot be 
counted as members of the Christian Church. 
Asia has a very large number of such people, par- 
ticularly among those classes which possess most 
authority and leadership. In such countries as 
Japan, China, and India they are a tremendous 
asset for peace and international understanding. 
When we add them to the more than fifteen mil- 
lion Christian converts both Eoman Catholic and 
Protestant and the nearly six thousand mission- 
aries we find an already considerable Christian 
influence both in the direction of internal affairs 
and in international relations which is definitely 
and actively Christian. 

IV 
DEMOCRACY AliTD THE NON-CHEISTIAN EELIGIONS 

There is no blinking the fact that the non-Chris- 
tian religious faiths of the world are now in the 
midst of very great changes. Some of them have 
been very definitely affected by the war and the 
peace settlements, and all of them have been 
greatly influenced by the new spirit which is 
abroad among the non-Christian peoples. 

Islam has been shattered by the defeat of the 



THE NON-CHRISTIAN EACES 117 

Central Powers. As a political power of impor- 
tance it is gone never to be restored. The fu- 
ture of Mohammedanism as a religious system 
cannot be predicted accurately, but there is noth- 
ing to indicate the appearance of a new vitality. 
In India, which has a Mohammedan population of 
sixty-seven millions, the present tendency is for 
the Mohammedan to unite with the Hindu on a 
political platform of nationalism in which the old 
religious zeal now finds its expression in the new 
patriotism. Mohammedan leaders themselves 
told me that their religion has entirely lost its 
missionary spirit and that the number of new 
converts hardly equals the loss as Mohammedans 
become either Hindus or Christians. 

Western civilization has been for a long time a 
disintegrating force on Mohammedanism. The 
opening of the Suez Canal, the partition of Af- 
rica, the building of railways and now the new 
political influences which have been set loose by 
the war, are productive of marked changes on the 
spiritual and intellectual as well as the political 
life of Islam. Neither spiritually nor intellec- 
tually is the Mohammedan prepared to withstand 
these new influences, and fanaticism is a weak 
weapon of defense. Dr. Samuel M. Zwemer is au- 
thority for the statement that 95% per cent of the 
Mohammedan men of Egypt are illiterate and 
only three in a thousand of the women can read. 
Out of a Mohammedan population of eleven and 
one-half millions in Egypt 560,000 are blind. 



118 A BETTER WOELD 

Islam lowers the moral vitality of tlie people, 
weakening them for progress. The educated Mo- 
hammedan in Asia Minor, as well as in India and 
Africa, becomes either a rationalist or a mystic. 
*'The old order has passed. The Moslem World 
is in the melting pot," says Dr. Zwemer. 

The animistic faiths, such as one encounters in 
Africa, always weaken and disintegrate as they 
come into contact with western civilization as rep- 
resented by the railway and the trading-post. 
There religions belong to the infancy of mankind. 
They are survivals. They have been unable to 
stand even before the better culture of the Mo- 
hammedan trader. Much less can they hold to«- 
gether as their adherents learn to read and write 
and to understand the simple laws of physical sci- 
ence. The primitive races both in Africa and 
Asia are soon to see railway trains passing their 
doors every day and in a thousand ways they are 
to be thrown in contact with superior cultures. 
Their religion will go, as it is already going, the 
way of the medicine man and of all primitive, 
childish superstitions. 

Hinduism is more formidable, for it is related 
to a strong and rich culture. I have travelled 
rather widely through India, and have often been 
in remote villages, the degradation of which can 
hardly be described, but I never saw a Hindu who 
even remotely resembled a savage. The most de- 
graded always bears the marks of a civilizing 
culture. The gulf which separates him from the 



THE NON-CHEISTIAN RACES 119 

most finished Christian is narrower than the gulf 
which lies between him and the animist. We shall 
do well to recognize this fact, for it is all too com- 
mon to assmne that non-Christian peoples are 
savages, if not cannibals. 

Yet Hinduism is weakening notably. It is los- 
ing its hold at the top, among the most cultured, 
among the university group and the leaders of 
public opinion. Rules of caste are relaxed or 
ignored. At the bottom, among the *^ untouch- 
ables ' ' Hinduism is losing even more rapidly. The 
Mass Movements of these outcaste people are 
among the great social movements of the world. 
They represent the desire of the outcaste for 
emancipation from the miserable social, economic 
and religious fate to which Hinduism assigns him. 
He is aflame with the desire for liberty. There 
are literally hundreds of thousands of *^ untouch- 
ables'' today who according to the Anglican 
Bishop of Madras, an authority* on the subject, are 
ready to repudiate the religion of their fathers. 
The increase of facilities for education and com- 
munication among these fifty milHons of unhappy 
people will greatly accelerate this movement. 

Hinduism is inextricably bound up, through 
caste, with a tyrannous economic order which 
operates in favor of the upper-caste man. It is, 
in fact, as much an economic as a religious sys- 
tem, and economically it is out of step with the 
democratic movement of the world. The Hindu 
who is seeking emancipation from his economic 



120 A BETTER WOELD 

bondage finds that Ms religion stands squarely in 
the way. It not only exacts enormous tribute in 
the way of contributions to its temples and priests 
but it also restricts his choice of employment, his 
place of residence, his freedom of travel. A new 
economic order is appearing in India, the factory 
system is coming, there is a marked movement 
from the rural districts to the large industrial 
centers, and at the same time educational facilities 
are increasing. All this is weakening Hinduism 
considered either as a social or as a religious 
system. 

In one other respect Hinduism stands in the 
way of the national development. It is a divisive 
system, shutting people off from union with each 
other and also from union with those of another 
faith like the Mohammedans. And the strongest 
current in India today is toward national unity 
and patriotism. 

In the face of these disintegrating influences 
there is little hope for Hinduism until it effects 
such a complete transformation as to leave it with 
slight resemblance to its present form. There are 
some signs of this transformation but there are 
more signs of its collapse before the transforma- 
tion can be completed. 

The religion of China is difficult to define. My 
Chinese boatman starts up the river. His rela- 
tions to me and to the oarsmen whom he takes 
along are based on the teachings of Confucius. He 
bums joss to the spirits when we come to the 



THE NON-CHEISTIAN EACES 121 

rapids, thus placating the Taoist deities of ani- 
mistic descent. His marriage and his father's 
funeral were attended by Buddhist priests. Gen- 
erally speaking, the Chinese are not ardently re- 
ligious, certainly not so religious as the Indians. 
Eeligion in China is not a supremely effective 
force of any sort. 

Confucianism, like Hinduism, lies in the way of 
the achievement of a sense of national unity and 
of patriotism, though for a different reason. 
Hinduism divides the nation into innumerable 
castes: Confucianism divides into families. It 
creates marvelous filial loyalty but it does not 
stimulate public spirit. It is singularly lacking, 
as one sees it in practice, in the spirit of the Good 
Samaritan. The Chinese are a race of families 
and in one sense the Chinese are very democratic. 
Each man appears to be able to mind his own 
business, but as a citizen of a nation, sharing a 
social responsibility for minding everybody's 
business he is a conspicuous failure outside of his 
own family. China's weakness before Japan in 
the last few years has not been due to the in- 
dividual inferiority of the Chinese, and it is 
obviously not due to lack of numbers. China has 
been weak because the average Chinese really 
hasn't cared what happened to China if only he 
and his family could be left in peace to grow 
rice and to trade. Confucianism will leave its 
mark on China, for it has many elements of great 
moral strength, but it will never make of the peo- 



122 A BETTER WOELD 

pie a self-conscious, imified, patriotic nation. It 
is at this point that Christianity is able to make 
its greatest contribution. 

The Shinto religion of Japan is just the reverse 
of Confucianism. Japanese religion is identified 
with patriotism, with the person of the Emperor. 
Here lies its greatest weakness as a religion. It 
is identified with a social, political and economic 
system which is autocratic, in theory a despotism. 
Autocracy and despotism stand in the way of the 
consent of the governed, of democracy. When they 
fell in Europe the religion which had given them 
the benefit of its sanctions also fell. It is very 
difficult to see how democracy could make its way 
in Japan without the practical overthrow of 
Shintoism. And it is equally difficult to see how 
democracy can sweep the rest of the world and 
pass by Japan. In fact there is abundant evidence 
in the present popular discontent in Japan, in the 
increased volume of criticism directed against the 
government, that Japan has already been deeply 
infected with the democratic spirit. 

Professor John Dewey, of Columbia University, 
writing in .^^The DiaP' (May 17, 1919) states, 
after a visit to Japan : 

*'The cause of liberalism in Japan has taken 
a mighty forward leap — so mighty as to be almost 
unbelievable. The causes which produced it can 
sustain it. If they do sustain it, there will be 
little backward reaction. If they do not continue 
in force to sustain it, they will betray it. To speak 



THE NON-CHRISTIAN RACES 123 

more plainly, the release of liberal forces that had 
been slowly forming beneath the lid was due to the 
belief that democracy really stood for the supremacy 
of fairness, humanity, and good feeling, and that 
consequently in a democratic world a nation like 
Japan, ambitious but weak in many respects in 
which her competitors are strong, could afford to 
enter upon the paths of liberalism. The real test 
has not yet come.'' 

In fact the present instability of the non- 
Christian religions throughout the world is di- 
rectly related to the even greater instability of 
the social, economic and even political institutions 
of the respective countries. The non-Christian 
faiths stand in the way of the social progress that 
their adherents are determined to attain. They 
cast their sanctions over practices and customs 
which have survived from the despotic days of 
tyrants. As the new spirit of self-determination 
in politics and industry undermines the confidence 
of the people in existing social orders, the re- 
ligions which bless those orders also lose their 
hold upon the believer. The situation is, in this 
respect, similar to that in Russia and in some 
other parts of the Christian world, although with 
a vast difference. Christianity is essentially a 
religion of brotherhood and of democracy, which 
not only survives the corrupt expressions of the 
faith that are used to give an odor of sanctity to 
unchristian political and economic arrangements, 
but even supplies the new vitality and power by 



124 A BETTER WORLD 

which the old orders are destroyed. The history 
of Europe for a thousand years contains illustra- 
tions of how the Gospel, in a purified form, rose 
up to smite both the Church and the society which 
had corrupted it; whereas the non-Christian 
faiths are found to be essentially lacking in some 
one or more qualities with the aid of which adjust- 
ment to the democratic demands of the modern 
age might be possible. 

The non-Christian religions are being weighed 
by the demands of the new day and are found 
wanting. Not one of them offers us an effective 
religious resource which may be martialled for the 
defense of the League of Nations as a ^ living 
thing," nor do these religions offer us a sufficient 
basis on which to build a new temple of inter- 
national and inter-racial amity. 



THE TIITTED EACES AGAIE^ST THE WOELD « 

On one of the dull days in Paris during the 
Peace Conference I called on C. D. B. King, the 
Secretary of State for Liberia, the first negro, 
probably, in the history of the world to sit in an 
international political conference and to use a 
vote in behalf of the political future of his race. 

Mr. King is a rather slender, carefully dressed, 
quiet- spoken gentleman. Only by the color of his 
skin would he be distinguished from any group of 
average citizens in any Christian country. The 



THE NON-CHEISTIAN EACES 125 

gulf which yawns between him and his black 
brother in the kraal of the equatorial jungle would 
seem to us uncrossable were it not for the fact 
that Mr. King, with the help of his forebears, has 
already crossed it. 

^ ' They say that we are too religious in Liberia, ' ' 
said Mr. King, ^^but our faith in the mercy and 
justice of God has been abundantly justified. It 
is quite true that Liberia has depended not on 
armies and navies but on God. We believe sin- 
cerely that the nations of the earth are in the 
hands of Almighty God." Then Mr. King gave 
an illustration of how Liberia's official religious 
faith has been vindicated. 

In 1913, four German warships suddenly ap- 
peared in the port of Freetown and at the same 
time the German Consul waited on the govern- 
ment and presented a bill for $85,000, on behalf of 
some German merchants. The bill must be settled 
immediately, an apology must be offered by the 
government and other humiliating demands must 
be complied with. There was even a threat to pull 
down the Liberian flag. Liberia did not lose heart. 
Negotiations were begun, a commission was ap- 
pointed to examine the claim, the claim was re- 
duced to $5,000 and paid. The Liberian flag did 
not come down, and when the war broke out, Free- 
town was the only neutral port on all that coast 
of Africa where German citizens could breathe the 
sweet air of liberty, as Mr. King took occasion to 
remind them. 



126 A BETTER WORLD 

^^ Liberia became the stone which the builders 
had rejected, '* said Mr. King, smiling quietly. 
Now Liberia sends one of her sons, a black man, 
to the ancient halls of royal Versailles to sit in 
judgment with the nations of the world upon the 
crimes of autocracy. Truly the mighty had been 
cast down and the lowly exalted to high estate. 

You may smile if you will, and attach little im- 
portance to the fact that the Liberian Secretary 
of State sat as a delegate in the Peace Confer- 
ence, but you cannot smile away the fact that the 
bridge over which he and his forebears walked out 
of the jungle and up to Paris was Christianity. 
If Africa can produce one Mr. King, it can, by 
the same methods, produce them by the hundreds 
of thousands. And will any one venture to 
promise that the destinies of the great continent 
of Africa, with its more than one hundred million 
people, can ever be settled in a way which is alike 
satisfactory to them and safe for the world, until 
Africa is able to send not one but as many dele- 
gates as are needed adequately to represent Africa 
in the Commonwealth of Nations of the v/orld! 

Notwithstanding the fact that there is no color 
line in the Gospel of Christ, the Christian nations 
have a bad record for color consciousness and 
color discrimination, the United States the worst 
of all. It was a shocking comment on democracy 
that the inclusion of a clause guaranteeing racial 
equality in the covenant of the League of Nations 
was prevented by the United States, and by Aus- 



THE NON-CHEISTIAN EACES 127 

tralia, where democratic principles are assumed 
to have been even more completely applied under 
a Labor government. Let Americans frankly ad- 
mit with shame that the American record on the 
color question is the blackest blot on our Christian 
professions. Let it be admitted that we shall be 
able to contribute little to its solution as an inter- 
national question until we have cleared our record 
at home. Let us also remember that the matter 
lies with the public sentiment, and the churches 
more than any other agency have it within their 
power to direct public sentiment on the color ques- 
tion. 

But the color question contains more than a 
challenge to the sincerity of our Christian profes- 
sions of brotherhood. It contains a threat. The 
man with the black or tinted skin cannot forever 
be suppressed. There is enough distrust of the 
white man's fairness and justice when it comes 
to dealing with racial equality to make Africa 
and particularly Asia the armed camps in the 
next century that Europe has been in the last. The 
Japanese are the acknowledged leaders of the 
colored races. For the time being the Japanese 
have chosen to cast in their lot with the white 
races and play the white man's game. They have 
played it extremely well, too. But there is noth- 
ing to prevent Japan in the future from placating 
the tinted races and accepting their support to 
play the yellow man's game. There will be little 
hope for a Commonwealth of Nations to include 



128 A BETTER WORLD 

the world, if the white races thus force the tinted 
races into the arms of Japan. 



yi 

[THE EACE QUESTION AND STAND AEDS OF LIVING 

But the color question is not simple. It is 
joined with the question of maintaining superior 
standards of living, and with economic competi- 
tion. Even the leaders of the tinted races recog- 
nize this fact and are willing to make concessions 
in the interest of protecting higher living stand- 
ards. The matter of race equality cannot be 
surely settled until the standards of living among 
the tinted races have been brought to the level of 
those among the white races. Thus the color 
question leads to an industrial question not dis- 
similar to that which is now faced in Europe. We 
shall not see a secure League of European Na- 
tions until the low standards of living of some 
countries have been lifted to the level of the high- 
est. This fact was recognized in the industrial 
recommendations which are in the covenant of 
the League of Nations. The international ques- 
tion is similar. When the Japanese and Chinese 
and Hindu workmen have the same standards of 
living, education and political rights that the 
American v^^orkmen on the Pacific Coast have, the 
legitimate American opposition to the recognition 
of race equality will have disappeared. In the 
same way it will disappear in Australia. 



THE NON-CHEISTIAN RACES 129 

Asia is now beginning to undertake tlie indus- 
trial revolution. In Japan and in the larger cen- 
ters of China and India the old household system 
of hand production and the primitive methods of 
agriculture and mining are being replaced by 
methods borrowed from the western world. The 
production of wealth is increasing, wages are ris- 
ing, rising very rapidly in Japan and India, and 
the standard of living is pulling up. The great- 
est aid to such a process, as we know from a study 
of European history, is democracy in both govern- 
ment and industry. If Christian democracy ad- 
vances hand in hand with the industrial revolution 
in Asia and Africa, not only will the color ques- 
tion largely solve itself but these continents will 
also be spared the horrible penalties which an 
unchristian industrial and economic system has 
brought upon the western nations. The western 
world will also be spared a possible terrible con- 
flict in which the cheap labor of the world is 
thrown into competition with the more highly paid 
white labor. 

VII 
INTER-EACIAIi PEACE 

What attitude, then, shall Christianity adopt 
toward the non-Christian subject races? The 
League of Nations contains no promise that every 
subject race shall be free as soon as it demon- 
strates its ability to defend that freedom, but is 
there any other basis on which the world may 



130 A BETTEE WOELD 

come to international and inter-racial amity and 
understanding! The question is tliis : Shall we at- 
tempt to keep the subject races in subjection, 
shall we ignore them, or shall we give ourselves 
heartily to helping them to political, economic and 
moral standards similar to our own? We cannot 
suppress them, except for a time; they will not 
be ignored; we can lift them up. 

If we accept this last choice we shall have be- 
fore us three lines of action. First we must se- 
cure for the policy the public sentiment of the 
Christian nations. The non-Christian nations 
which are now groping their way toward that 
goal must be both helped and protected. And 
when a nation arrives we must see that the public 
sentiment of the world, as expressed in govern- 
ment and in economics, is prepared to receive her. 
In all of this work the Christian Church may, nay 
must, take a leading part. The Church must ex- 
tend her spirit of democracy to apply to inter- 
racial and international relations. She must set 
out in earnest upon the Christian conquest of the 
world for Christian democracy, carrying with her 
a political and economic as well as a personal and 
spiritual Gospel. 

**The democracy of the Methodist movement,'' 
writes a recent historian of modern religious 
movements, ^'was founded upon the eternal possi- 
bility before every man." Wesley preached this 
doctrine to the masses, the unchurched, unshep- 
herded crowds of Britain whose social, economic 



THE NON-CHRISTIAN RACES 131 

and political rights were even fewer tlian their 
religious privileges. It was, to a large degree, 
in the chapel, nnder the leadership of the lay- 
preacher, that the masses of England came to self- 
consciousness. And not a little because this move- 
ment was primarily religious, and therefore con- 
servative and controlled, England turned, in the 
following half -century without a revolution, an 
acute political and economic corner in her develop- 
ment. 

What Wesley did for the neglected classes of 
England a century and more ago the Christian 
Church of today can do for the neglected classes 
of the world. And just as the Wesleyan Move- 
ment in England, by rousing the industrial classes 
and making them articulate and accustomed to 
democratic methods, contributed to saving Eng- 
land from bloody class and industrial conflicts 
such as are now sweeping over Europe, so by the 
same methods Christianity can save the world. 

In the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the hope of 
democracy and in Christian democracy is the hope 

of the world. 

i 

VIII I 

CHEISTIANITY, ALSO, MUST CHANGE 

It is not an accident that the nations which have 
already achieved self-government are Christian 
nations. Nor is it an accident that the nations 
which have most completely incorporated demo- 
cratic principles into their government are those 



132 A BETTER WORLD 

nations in which the Christian Chnrch has been 
freest and Christ most exalted. Those European 
and South American nations, nominally Christian, 
in which government is now most insecure, are 
the very nations where religious liberty has been 
most suppressed and where the principles of 
Christian freedom have been most impeded in 
their expression. At the present moment the 
races of the world which are least free, whether 
under despotism or paternalism, are also the races 
which are non-Christian. This also is not an ac- 
cident. 

But in measuring the resources of Christianity 
in the non-Christian world, as an effective agency 
for undergirding such a League of Nations as we 
may hope some day to see realized, with an effec- 
tive world wide democracy of Christian brother- 
hood, we do not overlook the fact that organized 
Christianity is at present ill prepared for the 
task. Like all religions it, too, must change. The 
Church which is false to its trust, as was the Rus- 
sian Church, is liable to disappear over night, and 
it cannot return until it has been greatly modified. 
The Roman Catholic Church in some European 
countries is living over a volcano. It is liable to 
the most profound changes at any moment, for it 
may have to adjust itself to a new set of social, 
economic and political conditions in a moment as 
it has adjusted itself in a century of peaceful 
adaptations to the ideals of American democracy. 

We must admit more;, the Protestant Church, 



THE NON-CHRISTIAN RACES 133 

or to be more concrete, the Americaii Protestant 
cliiirclies, will be compelled to change. Probably 
they will eventnally undergo still further con- 
solidations of kindred polities, although church 
union at the expense of liberty would be deplor- 
able and is unlikely. But in one fundamental re- 
spect they must change their attitude toward 
humanity. They must cease to be sectional, racial 
or national. I refer not so much to changes of 
ecclesiastical organization, although that may in 
part be involved; I have in mind a change of 
spirit. It is necessary for them to become as 
inter-racial and as international as the Gospel 
itself. In a word, they must become democratic 
on a world wide scale, even as they are now demo- 
cratic within their own relatively restricted 
groups. 

Lest someone may feel that this implies too 
little regard for the fact that every American 
denomination already sustains a large amount of 
inter-racial and international work through its 
missions, perhaps I ought to explain that I do not 
forget this fact, nor do I forget that this work, 
while relatively large and of tremendous influence, 
is carried on in spite of the extreme apathy of 
perhaps nine-tenths of the church members and 
the openly expressed dissympathy of hardly less 
than a majority. At best it is invested with the 
spirit of patronage rather than brotherhood. The 
spirit of the American Protestant Church has not 
yet become, within the great mass of the member- 



134 A BETTER WORLD 

ship, either inter-racial or international. Senti- 
ment is rapidly changing, but one may venture a 
guess that in the average American church even 
today it would be possible to secure more votes 
for the ideals of the League of Nations, limited 
and compromised as they are, than for the uncom- 
promised ideal of foreign missions to convert the 
entire world to Christ. 

The Church which avoids this change or escapes 
it is as certain to go down in the new world as did 
the Russian Church which refused to become 
democratic on a national scale in the old Russia. 



CHAPTER VI 
CHEISTIANITY AND THE NEXT CENTUEY 

I 

THE END OF RELIGIOUS ISOLATION 

The time is obviously long overdue to make the 
teachings of Jesus the subject of free debate in 
every market-place and every capital in the world. 

The issue is clear-cut. If the Gospel is wrong, 
reject it; if it is right, accept and apply it. Apply 
it in government, in industry, in the ordinary re^ 
lations of daily life of which the social fabric, 
both political and economic, is made. 

Note the qualification: it is free debate — ^no 
compulsion, no threats of force. It is not 
academic, either, but a simple and direct appeal 
to reason and to conscience. 

Do we not see at once that this appeal is in it- 
self the very essence of democracy? The moment 
it is made we create a spiritual liberty, an acknowl- 
edgement of freedom, an acceptance of freedom, 
and a joint recognition of both individual and 
social responsibility to discover and to apply the 
truth. 

To start such a debate simultaneously in the 
market-place and the capital, among the master 

135 



136 A BETTER WOELD 

nations and tlie subject races, among near- 
Christian nations and non-Christian nations alike, 
is at once to underwrite both Treaty of Peace and 
League of Nations with the assurance of success, 
as well as utterly to transform them. 

American Christians may recognize three prac- 
tical phases in the challenge. 

There is one problem which is peculiarly, 
though not exclusively, American — ourselves. Is 
the United States Christian! Is it a Christian 
democracy! How about our international, our 
inter-racial, our world-wide relations'? More im- 
portant still, what of our own mind and heart? We 
shall return to this phase of the challenge in the 
next chapter. 

We have, secondly, to take into consideration 
the various forms of Christianity and of ec- 
clesiastical expression which we find among the 
other so-called Christian nations of the western 
hemisphere and of Europe. Many Americans will 
think they detect Pharisaism and impudence in 
even recognizing that these nations need our help 
while we have failed to correct ourselves. Until 
we have solved our own problems, they argue, we 
have no right to mix up in the problems of other 
nations. Such an argument, applied to political 
matters, was put forward to defeat the League of 
Nations. Yet all broad-minded Americans recog- 
nized, however they felt about the precise form of 
covenant under discussion, that the United States 
can no longer live in political isolation. No more 



CHEISTIANITY AND NEXT CENTURY 137 

can we live in spiritual isolation from the balance 
of Christendom. 

II 

AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY IN EUROPE 

Up to the present, American Christianity has 
drawn very liberally from European Christianity, 
and has given very little in return. We have 
taken over the ideal of religious liberty and the 
free church separated from government; we have 
taken from Europe our various forms of church 
polity and our theologies. American Christianity 
has become a vast reservoir into which has flowed, 
borne by the tides of immigration, the great treas- 
ures of an old-world faith. We have appropriated 
not only the ideas but the progressive sons and 
daughters who brought them ; we have made them 
our own, but have we not all but ignored the corre- 
sponding obligations which the acceptance of such 
rich gifts involves? 

Now the force of events has turned the tide of 
immigration in the opposite direction. The United 
States was compelled to send two million of 
her finest men, as well as billions of treasure, back 
to Europe to join in a struggle to save the world. 
We had by no means solved all our problems at 
home before we sent them. We could not even 
send a perfect army. We gave our men, our 
money, our ideas and our ideals. They were all 
thrown into a common fund in which each nation 
was both giving and receiving, and out of the com- 



138 A BETTER WOELD 

mon effort came victory. How illogical, how ab- 
surd that we should now close our doors again as 
the boys come home. We freely shared with 
Europe our secrets for making submarines and 
poison gas, and we freely borrowed secrets from 
them. Shall we not now share with Europe our 
secrets for making men? 

We set up in Europe an international, and to 
some extent an inter-racial, court of law, where 
every nation may have a right to come, try 
its case, debate its merits, and we hope through 
adequate publicity appeal to public opinion. Is it 
not equally right, and equally a spiritual neces- 
sity, that we set up not merely in one capital of 
Europe but in every one, and in every market- 
place as well, a debate as to the merits of the 
Gospel? Or, if you will, make it a debate not 
only of the Gospel but of all religious truth. 
Let England state her case; let Italy, Russia, 
the United States, the South American re- 
publics state theirs; let India, China and Japan 
take up the debate. Let it be open to all for each 
to make his appeal. Surely the state of religion 
is as much a matter of concern to American 
Christians as the state of government and political 
treaties is to American citizens. If European 
Christianity still has gifts to make to America — 
and beyond a doubt it has — ^we ought to accept 
them as quickly as we accepted any military de- 
vice or plan of campaign. If American Christian- 
ity has a contribution to make to Europe we are 



CHEISTIANITY AND NEXT CENTURY 139 

bound to make it. How else shall the League of 
Nations have the spiritual vitality and idealism 
without which it will surely become a second Holy 
Alliance^ backward not forward looking? 

There is no more certain way to carry to Europe 
and to South America the democratic spirit which 
is now so sorely lacking than to reopen the dis- 
cussion of tlie claims of Christian brotherhood. 
Let American Christians cease from their isolation 
and freely make their contributions. How about 
a Free Church? How about a Free School? How 
about the free and open Bible ? Then let European 
Christianity challenge us with its searching ques- 
tions. How about an international, an inter- 
racial Grospel? As we debate these questions shall 
we not, as citizens not merely of states but of the 
world, come to that very recognition of social ob- 
ligation, of Christian faith, for the lack of which 
the war was visited upon us? 

Such a program does not involve a repetition of 
the old error upon which the temporal power of 
the Church was erected. No principle is more 
securely won than that the Church must go out 
and keep out of politics. But when the Church 
goes out, the Christians must come in. The 
separation of Church and State does not involve 
the separation of the Gospel and Life. The 
sovereignty of a state is not violated by an ap- 
peal to reason and to conscience, even when the 
appeal originates outside the boundaries of the 
state. On the contrary, it is the very essence of 



140 A BETTER WORLD 

the practice of peace that every citizen of every 
state shall enjoy not only a government which is 
by consent of the governed, but also a church 
which is by consent of the believer. The temporal 
power of any Church has all but passed. The 
political and industrial power of the individual 
believer, expressing himself in democratic fashion 
as a citizen, has all but arrived. How important 
then to reopen the discussion in Europe as well as 
in America of the Gospel as the charter of human 
brotherhood. And has not America something to 
contribute to that discussion in Europe, even as 
Europe has always contributed to its discussion in 
America? 

There is a further reason why Americans must 
be concerned with the state of religion in other 
Christian nations. The non-Christian world has 
its contracts with Christendom almost exclusively 
through these other Christian nations. To 
Africa, to Asia, to non-Christian South America 
Christianity is largely European Christianity. To 
them European Christianity is the Gospel. The 
European nations are the master states, the 
colonizing nations. These colonial arrangements 
between Europe on the one hand and Asia and 
Africa on the other contain elements of great 
political instability in which the United States 
from now on must be greatly interested. There 
is little hope for permanent peace in the world 
until those contacts of Europe, Asia and Africa 
have become fraternal where they are now either 



CHEISTIANITY AND NEXT CENTURY 141 

paternalistic or even despotic. It is a matter of 
tremendous concern to America tliat Europe adopt 
the principles of Christian brotherhood in its re- 
lations to the non-Christian world. 

I believe that the American Protestant Churches 
ought in a spirit of Christian brotherhood to adopt 
an adequate program of friendly church extension 
in Europe and in South America, which is so dis- 
tinctively the daughter of old Europe. Every 
European country represents as free a field for 
the extension of Protestantism as the average 
American city. Let America carry the spirit of 
the free Protestant Church to those countries 
where such a spirit is all but unknown. Let her 
bring back In return that spirit of international- 
ism in faith which old Europe has retained. 

Ill 

WHY FOKEIGN MISSIONS? 

The third phase of the challenge to American 
Christianity is the non-Christian nations and 
races. 

Among the non-Christian races we have about 
two-thirds of the population of the globe, nearly 
a billion people. These people are now surging 
forward toward self-expression, toward self-de- 
termination. Some of the strongest of them are 
becoming maddened at the unwillingness of the 
Christian races to recognize racial equality. They 
possess unlimited stores of raw materials and un- 



142 A BETTER WORLD 

limited labor supply, and they are now entering, 
or are about to enter, an industrial revolution 
similar to that which the western world passed 
through in the last century. These races are 
already marvelously rich in spite of their poverty. 
A century hence they will be indescribably richer. 

Considerations of national security, of humani- 
tarian feeling, and the consistency of our own 
Christian profession make it necessary that 
Christianity be immediately introduced into every 
market-place in the non-Christian world. 

In spite of facts cited in foregoing chapters this 
assertion is certain to be challenged. Probably 
this long existing apathy or opposition of the 
average American Christian to so-called foreign 
missions is due largely to ignorance of what for- 
eign missions are, and what they do. In spite of 
all that has been accomplished in the last genera- 
tion in the way of educating Americans as to the 
methods of the foreign missionary work, it is still 
uncommon, the moment one gets outside a small 
circle within any given church, to find any one who 
argues against foreign missions except from mis- 
taken facts. 

The Christianizing of non-Christian peoples 
rests on a tripod of hospital, school and church. 
The hospital represents the ideal of mercy and 
the conservation of human life. The school stands 
for literacy, for vocational training, for modern 
methods of agriculture, for professional skill as a 
substitute for superstition. The Christian Church 



CHRISTIANITY AND NEXT CENTURY 143 

is there to form character, to teach individual and 
social responsibility, love of neighbor, love of 
country, and human brotherhood. The purpose of 
foreign missions is not the establishment of an 
institution or a church but the inculcation of an 
ideal. The method employed is the very practice 
of democracy. 

When I say that we must set up a debate as to 
the merits of the Gospel in every market-place and 
every capital of every non-Christian race of peo- 
ple I do not mean a theological disputation. The 
fundamental claim of the Gospel, considered in its 
practical aspect, is the infinite value of every 
human soul. That is the question which must be 
debated in America, Africa, and Asia, as well as 
at the capital of the League of Nations. Nor will 
it be an academic debate. 

Before the end of the next century it will mean 
an infinite difference to America, as well as to the 
other western nations, whether the present non- 
Christian world is organized on the basis of the 
value of human life, or on the basis of its cheap- 
ness. To begin with the crass issues, it will mean 
the difference between high and low productivity, 
between good and bad markets, between high and 
low standards of living for western working-men. 
So long as human life in Africa and Asia is held 
so cheap that it does not make any difference how 
poor a hut a man lives in, what kind of clothes he 
wears, what kind of food he eats, or how much 
wages he receives, the economic stability on which 



144 A BETTER WORLD 

the League of Nations must rest is precarious. If 
life over there is so cheap that millions are per- 
mitted to die each year of plague and preventable^ 
disease, and millions more are permitted to live 
a lingering death because of needless physical in- 
capacities, the productive capacity of the world 
and its net wealth are thereby diminished. And 
we shall never know when some epidemic or plague 
like influenza may not leap the borders of a non- 
Christian race and spread over the Christian na- 
tions. Epidemically the world is already one. 

The cheapness of human life is the basis for 
militarism. You cannot subtract men from their 
homes and industry to make cannon-fodder for 
imperialism when once they believe in the 
Christian doctrine of the infinite value of the 
human soul. A belief in the cheapness of life is 
the open door to war. The non-Christian world 
now stands hesitating between the choices pre- 
sented : militarism or new definitions of the value 
of human life. 

The corollary of the belief in the infinite value 
of the human soul is equality of privilege. But 
equality of privilege is the most anarchistic, 
divisive, dangerous doctrine in the universe when 
separated from the doctrine of social responsibil- 
ity and brotherhood. A desire for equality of 
privilege may lead to democracy; it may also lead 
to despotism. No, the foreign missionary does 
not deal in academic disputations over theological 



CHEISTIANITY AND NEXT CENTURY 145 

formulas. He deals with the very stuff out of 
which war and peace are made. 

The Christian world in general, and the mis- 
sionary world in particular, long ago outgrew the 
notion that the supremely important purpose of 
preaching the Gospel is to make more Methodists, 
or Baptists, or Presbyterians, or to add to the 
numerical strength of any sect. Indeed, one may 
translate the missionary purpose into popular 
language, and say, without any misstatement, that 
the purpose of foreign missionary work is to make 
good citizens, effective citizens of the new order 
which is now forming, Christian citizens. I quote 
from what the author has previously written on 
this subject. (The Democratic Movement in 
Asia ; Association Press ; New York) : 

*' Glance for a moment at what the missionary- 
does: first he asks for religious liberty, and then 
proclaims the inclusive and sweeping doctrines of 
the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of 
man. He establishes schools which not only teach 
the elementary branches, but set the example of 
equality by opening their doors to the poorest and 
most oppressed. The missionary hospital places a 
new value on the human body and sets standards 
for the conservation of life. It teaches charity and 
mercy. Through these channels go out the very in- 
fluences which create the ideals of brotherhood and 
democracy. 

''The missionary does not force conflicts with 
existing laws. He appeals to something far more 



146 A BETTER WORLD 

fundamental and persuasive — to public opinion; 
and, just in proportion as he gains the support of 
public opinion, the old order begins to crumble. 

*'When the missionary makes a convert, he makes 
a radical. With all the tact he possesses, and he 
usually has a good deal, he says in effect: the re- 
ligion of your father and mother was wrong. "When 
the convert accepts baptism he must, as it always 
has been, forsake his father and his mother. He 
must also repudiate the entire social system which 
lias been the meat and drink of his family, clan, 
nation, and race. What wonder, then, that the 
Christian convert is a man with capacities for radi- 
cal thought and action? 

**The young men and women then enter the mis- 
;sionary school, and there fashion and sharpen the 
weapons that become their superior equipment for 
the spreading of the new ideas they have acquired. 
The student learns to care properly for his body, 
thus finding an effective instrument to support his 
new convictions. His mind is trained and disci- 
plined, so that he goes back to his people better able 
than they to think clearly, and to reach sound con- 
clusions. He carries with him a vast fund of 
idealism drawn from all the deposits of a more 
efficient civilization. His very presence and su- 
perior accomplishments are sources of worthy 
.discontent among his less favored brothers. 

*'It is evident that the missionary commands the 
approach to the backward races. The Bishop of 
Calcutta said to me not long ago, when we were 
discussing the unrest in India: *For thirty years 
I taught Greene's English History to students in a 



CHEISTIANITY AND NEXT CENTURY 147 

mission college. I always said to myself, after fin- 
ishing the course, ^'If these boys don't get some of 
these ideals into their heads, it will not be my 
fault." ' Today India is beginning to be vibrant 
with the ideals, the development of which Pro- 
fessor Greene recorded. 

"Equally evident is the fact that, in future, the 
missionary must carry forward the work to make 
these ideals safe for the peoples who have adopted 
them. Until they are safe in Asia, they will not be 
secure in Europe or in America ; for in this modern 
world we are all neighbors. There is no one of the 
backward nations not nearer to the United States 
to-day than were the red men of the Dakotas to 
New York a century ago.*' 



IV 
JUSTICE TO THE TINTED KACES 

We may dwell for a few moments on the present 
Oriental Problem for purposes of illustration. One* 
ought not to convey the impression that the mis- 
sionary problem, or the problem of Christian 
democracy in the non-Christian races, is ex- 
clusively an Oriental matter, for such is far from 
the truth. We select the Oriental Problem in the 
first place because the writer happens to be more 
familiar with it than with that presented either 
in Africa or in the Near East, and also because 
the present Home Eule movement in India and 
the disputed claims for Shantung have clothed the 



148 A. BETTEE WOELB 

Far Eastern Question with a new interest for 
American readers. 

The Treaty of Peace leaves the world ill as- 
sured as to the next century in the Pacific Ocean. 
Y^e are not justified in panic over the possible 
uses which Japan may wish to make, or may be 
able to make, of her growing ascendency in Far 
Eastern affairs. Neither should we be justified in 
ignoring the fact that here is a nation which is 
rapidly building up a political, military and 
economic power in the East which more or less 
resembles the power that Germany was not long 
ago building in the West, and by much the same 
methods. We must calmly face the facts. 

The peculiarity of the Oriental Problem, often 
overlooked, is that it is not exclusively Oriental; 
it is also European and American. Great Britain, 
France, the Netherlands, Russia and America are 
directly interested. Any disturbance in the or- 
derly development of affairs, whether the causes 
are due to instability in China, Korea, Java, the 
Philippines or India, or whether they lie in the 
aggression of some outside power, concern almost 
immediately the entire world. Any development 
in Asia which tends to restrict the freest possible 
cultural and commercial intercourse between the 
East and the West, any arrangements which look 
toward the growth of a militarism in which Asia 
and the western world may be pitted against each 
other, are alarming. 

The present political and economic condition of 



Christianity and next century 149 

the Orient is highly unstable. The government of 
hundreds of millions of people does not rest on 
the consent of the governed and is maintained, 
ultimately, by armed force recruited in the West. 
The economic relations of these hundreds of mil- 
lions, likewise, do not rest altogether on the will- 
ing assent of Asia. Just now these facts are over- 
shadowed by troubles of an internal nature, the 
encroachments of Japan on Chinese territory and 
sovereignty. 

The existing acute irritations will probably be 
moderated in the near future. England is con- 
templating administrative and fiscal changes in 
India which, when settled, will allay a consider- 
able amount of the present discontent in that coun- 
try. These changes, together with the American 
policy in the Philippines, will set up standards of 
colonial arrangements which are quite likely to 
have an excellent influence in the French, DutcK 
and Japanese possessions. Between China and 
Japan there is not likely to be any armed clash 
in the near future. But these prospects do not 
meet the fundamental issue involved: Shall the 
relations between the various Oriental races and 
between them and the western powers rest in the 
future, as in the past, on the preponderance of 
military power and the threat of violence 1 

The existing situation gathers a mantle of ex- 
cuse from the present proved political incapacities 
of the subject and oppressed nations. India is 
still a long way from being able to administer her 



150 A BETTER WORLD 

own affairs with efficiency and with justice to the 
.governed. China has made thus far a botch of 
her efforts at republican government. It is un- 
likely that either Korea or Java could do better 
for themselves than is now being done for them. 
But what of the future? The choice is obvious. 
The government of the Asiatic races will continue 
to rest ultimately upon force, upon the armies 
.and navies of the master nations until such a time 
as the subject races qualify for independent self- 
government. Meanwhile, the master nations may 
either adopt a frank policy of preparing these 
nations for self-government or they may, as 
already with Japan, set them the example of, and 
teach them the lessons of, a militarism which 
would some day most certainly rise to smite the 
world on an international color-line of battle. 

Has Christianity, have the Christian forces of 
the world, nothing to say on this issue? 

If they have not, then we may as well admit that 
the Gospel of Christ, the message of human 
brotherhood, has passed, so far as it applies to 
subject people, to the International Socialists and 
to the Bolsheviki, for they do not remain silent. 

The Conference of the Socialist and Labor Par- 
ties of the Allied Nations declared, February 14, 
1915: '^This Conference cannot ignore the pro- 
found general causes of the European Conflict, it- 
self a monstrous product of the antagonisms which 
tear asunder capitalist society, and the policy of 
colonial dependencies and aggressive imperialism, 



CHEISTIANITY AND NEXT CENTURY 151 

against which International Socialism has never 
ceased to fight, and in which every government 
has its share of responsibility. 

** Satisfied that we are remaining true to the 
principle of the International, the members of the 
Conference express the hope that the working 
classes of the different countries will before long 
find themselves united again in their struggle 
against militarism and capitalistic imperialism. 
The victory of the Allied Powers must be a vic- 
tory for popular liberty, for unity, independence,, 
and autonomy of nations in the peaceful federa- 
tion of the United States of Europe and the 
world. ' ' 

The draft Eeport on Eeconstruction, prepared 
by a sub-committee of the British Labor Party and 
submitted in January, 1918, introduces the ques- 
tion in the following manner : 

*^ Count Okuma, one of the oldest, most experi- 
enced and ablest of the statesmen of Japan, watch- 
ing the present conflict from the other side of the 
globe, declares that it is nothing less than the 
death of European civilization. Just as in the 
past the civilization of Babylon, Egypt, Greece,, 
Carthage and the great Roman empire have been 
successively destroyed, so, in the judgment of this 
detached observer, the civilization of all Europe 
is now receiving its death blow. We of the Labor 
Party can so far agree in this estimate as to 
recognize, in the present world catastrophe, if 
not the death in Europe, of civilization itself, at 



152 A BETTER WORLD 

any rate the culmination and collapse of a dis- 
tinctive industrial civilization, which the workers 
will not seek to reconstruct. At such times of 
crisis it is easier to slip into rnin than to progress 
into higher forms of organization. That is the 
problem which presents itself to the Labor Party. 

^^If we in Britain are to escape from the decay 
of civilization itself, which the Japanese states- 
man foresees, we must ensure that what is 
presently to be built up is a new social order, 
based not on fighting but on fraternity; not on 
the competitive struggle for the means of bare 
life, but on a deliberately planned cooperation in 
production and distribution for the benefit of all 
who will participate by hand or by brain ; not on 
the utmost possible inequality of riches, but on a 
systematic approach towards a healthy equality 
of material circumstances for every person born 
into the world; not in an enforced dominion over 
subject nations, subject races, subject colonies, 
subject classes, or a subject sex, but, in industry 
as well as in government, on that equal freedom, 
that general consciousness of consent and that 
widest possible participation in power, both 
economic and political, which is characteristic of 
democracy. ' ' 

It is rather disappointing not to be able to find 
equally clear-cut pronouncements of opinion on 
the relations of the master to the backward na- 
tions in the reports of equally important Christian 
groups and assemblies. 



CHEISTIANITY AND NEXT CENTUEY 153 

The Christian forces of the world ought to have 
something to say on this subject. In brief, there 
are two words, one to the nations and govern- 
ments of which they are a part, the other to the 
peoples whose political and economic destinies 
they now so largely control. In the government 
of so-called Christian nations they should express 
themselves very positively for the adoption of a 
definite policy looking toward the complete 
emancipation of the subject races and the abolition 
of militaristic government over them. To the 
subject races they should say: ^^You and we are 
human brothers in the liberty wherewith Christ 
has freed mankind, and we promise to you heartily 
our utmost cooperation and help in the establish- 
ment of effective democracy, both political and 
economic. ' ' 

Looking toward this end the Christian forces 
of the world owe it to themselves, as well as to 
their human brothers of dark or tinted skins, to 
set up in every market-place in the non-Christian 
world a debate as to the merits of the Gospel of 
Christ as the charter of human liberty. And they 
owe it to set up not merely a debate but a demon- 
stration as well, showing the proof by hospital, 
school and church, that Christianity is the great 
step to human liberty. 



CHAPTER YII 

THE NEW PATRIOTISM 

I 

THE EELIGIOUS EESOUKCES OF THE WORLD FOR PEACE 

This book rests on the assumption that the re- 
ligious forces of mankind are of immeasurable 
value in determining public action. 

We do not pause to argue with those who hold 
that economic, more than religious influences, are 
decisive in fixing the purpose of a group of people, 
whether that group be a nation or a league of na- 
tions. It is true that men will fight because of 
hunger; but the nature of their religious convic- 
tions will modify the purposes of the battle and 
its methods. It will make a vast difference to the 
world in the next century, as it has in the last, 
what kind of a religious faith is most influential. 
Generally speaking, a church does more to sustain 
a wholesome public spirit in a neighborhood than 
a golf -club, a factory or a police station. 

But when we think of the religious forces of 
mankind we have in mind something deeper and 
more pervasive than their ecclesiastical expres- 
sion. Indian religion is something bigger and 
finer than the average dirty Hindu temple with 

154 



THE NEW PATRIOTISM 155 

its ignorant, dissolute priests. Chinese religion 
is more vital than the average deserted Chinese 
joss which one may see in any village. European 
and American religion is larger and more human 
than ever the Eussian, the Eoman, or any sect of 
the Protestant Church has made it appear. The 
religious nature of man is a powerful dynamo of 
energy, and the direction in which that energy is 
exerted is an immense factor in determining 
whether people live in actual, or potential, war 
with one another, or whether they live together in 
sympathetic cooperation to achieve a common 
good. 

To what extent can the League of Nations, con- 
sidered either as it actually is, or as a symbol of 
the Commonwealth of Nations which is the object 
of such general human aspiration, draw on these 
religious forces of the world for the ideals and 
for the life which will make it a *^ living thing"? 

If we distinguish between the present religious 
institutions and the religious nature of man which 
underlies them, and measure the resources of the 
former only, the answer is not encouraging. The 
religion of Europe, which will largely supply the 
spiritual atmosphere in which the League of Na- 
tions does its work, has been formalized, ec- 
clesiastic! zed, governmentalized, commercialized. 
Over large areas its institutions have been de- 
stroyed. Among very large numbers of working 
people it has been repudiated as the agent of 
Privilege. What vigor has been left to European 



156 A BETTER WOELD 

religion has been sadly crippled by the losses of 
the war. At the present moment it is ill prepared 
either with leaders or with active ideals to adjust 
itself to the new economic and industrial strife 
which is replacing the battle of the nations. 

The religious organizations of the non-Christian 
races are relaxed or relaxing. They have largely 
lost their missionary spirit. They do not possess 
the fundamental ideals of human liberty and 
social responsibility. Animism, Mohammedanism, 
Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Shintoism, — 
none of them offers the ideals or the energy out of 
which to build a Commonwealth of Nations based 
on freedom or brotherhood. 

The religion of the Western hemisphere shares 
to a limited degree in the defects of European re- 
ligion. Where it has preserved the spirit of lib- 
erty it has often sacrificed the international and 
the inter-racial spirit. 

Yet even in the face of these facts we may still 
believe the religious forces of the world are an 
important consideration in the creation of a new 
spirit of liberty and of international amity. In 
fact we must consider them, for as they stand, 
they may prove a positive hindrance; they may 
do much to thwart the coming of a day of uni- 
versal brotherhood. 



THE NEW PATEIOTISM 157 

n 

THE POWER OP RELIGIOUS CONVICTIOISrS 

We do not complete our summary of the re- 
ligious forces of the world until we take into con- 
sideration the more fundamental religious nature 
of man. One of the primary characteristics of the 
African is his religious sensibility. As for the 
Asiatics, they have, from the dawn of history, 
been the great creative religious folk. They have 
given religion to the world: Judaism, Hinduism, 
Buddhism, Christianity, Mohammedanism. A 
Eoman or an Anglo-Saxon may be the organizer, 
but it takes an Oriental to write a psalm or to 
make a prophecy. And the religious resources of 
Europe and America are immensely greater than 
the power of any church organization would indi- 
cate. There is nothing fixed about the religion 
of the western world except the Gospel which it 
accepts and yet applies with so many limitations. 

As the Gospel of Jesus is projected into the 
non-Christian world it will meet, as it is already 
meeting, the religious nature of the non-Christian 
peoples. When Christianity is restored to the 
Orient from which it came it uncovers energies 
and vitalities such as were characteristic of the 
Apostolic days. When the Oriental becomes an 
evangelical Christian he is likely to become a very 
superior one, fearless, uncompromising, a martyr 
to death as so many of them have been, or a martyr 
to daily persecution. If we were to take the rela- 



158 A BETTEE WOELD 

tive sincerity and vigor of the Christians of the 
United States and of Asia as standards, I would 
say without any hesitation that twenty-five mil- 
lion Christians in India or China or Japan would 
exert ten times the influence on public affairs that 
twenty-five million Protestants in the United 
States are now exerting. 

The present body of Christian believers in non- 
Christian lands already amounts to more than 
fifteen million souls. For every baptized Christian 
I am convinced that there are not less than ten 
whom we may call *^ near-Christians," people who 
have accepted the Christian ideals of conduct as 
the best. The best known book in all the world is 
the Bible, and the Bible, be it remembered, has 
always been the forerunner of both liberty and 
social responsibility, the two qualities of heart 
without which peace is never more than a truce. 
Nor can we forget the nearly ten thousand mis- 
sionaries already in non-Christian lands. They 
are, individually, the most effective agents which 
civilization now possesses for the interpretation 
of the non-Christian races to the master nations, 
and the interpretation of the idealistic side of 
western civilization in both Asia and Africa. 

in 

CHEISTIANITY A WOBLD-WIDE NECESSITY 

Because the religious forces of the world are 
SO supremely important in determining public 



THE NEW PATRIOTISM 159 

action we hold that world-wide Christianity is a 
logical, political, economic, and biological, as well 
as a personal necessity. 

It is a logical necessity, because if among any 
race of people it is not a necessity, it is not a 
necessity anywhere. Its claims do not admit of 
distinction between races or eras. Men are chil- 
dren of God and therefore brothers. The human 
soul is of infinite value: it contains measureless 
capacities for regeneration through the exercise 
of faith. Christ was the perfect revelation of the 
Creator's purpose, the Way. These claims, with 
many related ones, are not geographical, or racial. 
The moment one admits them for oneself and at 
the same time denies their equal imperativeness 
for one's neighbor, or for the African, or for the 
Asiatic, one is involved in logical absurdity. 
Christianity is logically a missionary religion. 
When it ceases to be missionary it ceases to be 
Christian. The vigor of Christian faith can al- 
ways be exactly gauged by its missionary zeal. 

It is a political necessity, because the principles 
I noted above are the only ones which offer a stable 
basis for a government by consent of the governed. 
Government without the consent of the governed 
rests ultimately on the preponderance of military 
power. It involves constant potential or actual 
war. The only alternative of an appeal to force 
is the appeal to reason and conscience on the basis 
of the universality of human brotherhood. War 
is anarchy, the negation of government itself*. 



160 A BETTJ^E WOELD 

Christianity is also a biological necessity. ' ^ The 
teachings of Jesus," says Professor George J. 
Pierce, of Stanford University, in The Nation 
(May 10, 1919), *'are not alone the noblest doc- 
trines for the guidance of human conduct and the 
satisfaction of the aspirations of the human heart. 
They are the expression, in terms of noblest senti- 
ment, of biological necessity. As rehgion as senti- 
ment, they have encompassed the world. They are 
convictions, but they have not convinced it. 
Biological reflection leads only to the struggle for 
existence and the survival of the fittest. It leads 
to a realization that only man has attempted to 
exist in places and numbers beyond the adequate 
supply of food and water, and that the only chance 
of his succeeding in this attempt lies, not in the 
destruction of his weaker fellows, but in his com- 
bining and cooperating with them that the earth 
may be forced to produce more than its spon- 
taneous yield of food." 

The personal necessity of world-wide Christian- 
ity lies in the fact that it will not suffice for our 
salvation from fratricidal war or international 
anarchy that we merely possess these convictions 
for ourselves. It is necessary to persuade the 
other man and the other nation of their rightness. 
Crusoe may believe in the principles of Christian 
brotherhood for himself, but if Friday does not 
accept them, a resort to arms will not make him 
accept them, and woe to Crusoe to the end of 
time. 



THE NEW PATEIOTISM 161 

Armed force is the background of the League 
of Nations, and not very far in the background, 
either, as Germany, Russia and China already 
know. Armed force is to be used only if the moral 
forces of the world fail, but what chance is there 
for the moral forces of the world to succeed in 
a world where even the Peace Conference was un- 
able to agree on a moral ideal? The League of 
Nations itself is not committed to either the moral 
ideal of racial equality or the ideal of the consent 
of the governed. 

The League of Nations cannot be enforced upon 
the world, except temporarily; it can be trans- 
formed and then supported by the organized opin- 
ion of mankind. The League is very far from 
being the Kingdom of God of which prophets 
dreamed and of which Christ taught but it can 
rest on the Kingdom of God, on a world-wide fel- 
lowship of all those whose hearts have been moved 
by the spirit of Christ to acknowledge the human 
brotherhood with its compelling obligations. 

A missionary Christianity is the biological 
necessity of civilization. Without it civilization 
will destroy itself. 

IV 

THE USE OF MILITANT MINOEITIES 

To meet this tremendous challenge organized 
Christianity is not very well prepared. American 
Protestantism in particular is unready and per- 



162 A BETTER WOELD 

haps most of all unprepared because of the pos- 
session of the very spirit which is its greatest con- 
tribution to world-wide Christianity, its independ- 
ence and its democracy. No hierarchy can control 
its efforts, no denomination can speak for it. 
American Protestantism is, speaking broadly, in 
spite of all the facts to the contrary, ignorant, in- 
dolent, divided, inarticulate. The organizations 
which might be presumed to be able to speak for 
it are entirely dependent upon public opinion 
which, in turn, is apathetic and ill informed. 

Division is the blessed heritage of Protestant- 
ism, the proof of its liberty but also its weakness. 
It is the instrument of ^^ direct action,'* what the 
I. W. W. is to economic reform. It is the ec- 
clesiastical expression of disrespect for the or- 
derly processes of republican government, the 
recourse of minorities. American Protestantism 
is always in especially grave danger of division. 
In fact, we may say that it is always in the process 
of schism, and that process is especially notice- 
able today. There is an ignorant, indolent major- 
ity and an aggressive, impatient minority. The 
minority often represents, as it does now, the 
strongest kind of power and leadership. The ques- 
tion always presented to that minority is, ^ ^ Shall 
we stay by the Church, or shall we leave it, cast- 
ing on our energies with other smaller groups 
which can be more quickly informed and more 
easily stirred?" Some answer this question one 
way, some another. It cannot be denied that for 



THE NEW PATEIOTISM 163 

more than a decade Protestantism has been in the 
process of this schism. There has been a steady 
stream, not large perhaps, but of immense power, 
which has been withdrawing* its strength from the 
Church, either to dissipate it or to spend it in 
other agencies of reform. The peculiarity of the 
present schism is that it does not result in the 
organization of still another denomination. It 
gives to us rather merely a large Christian 
penumbra, as it might be called, an outer circle 
of Christians, believers in the gospel, generously 
disposed toward the Church, but ineffective and 
undependable as members for the leavening of 
the lump. 

This schism would be immeasurably larger than 
it is were it not for the appearance, within the 
last half century, of a new tendency. It was only 
within that time that Protestantism learned how 
to utilize its militant minorities — an art which the 
Eoman Catholic Church had discovered centuries 
before. It has been characteristic of the Catholic 
Church, whenever new vitality appeared within 
the organization in response to new social or per- 
sonal needs, to permit the creation of new orders, 
the Dominicans, the Franciscans, the Jesuits, the 
Eedemptorist Fathers, the Christian Brothers, the 
St. Vincent de Paul and the Father Matthew So- 
cieties. These orders did not have to wait for the 
Church to be leaven; they remained within the 
Church and became the leaven. In the same way 
Protestantism has come to provide for similar 



164 A BETTER WORLD 

situations by organizing young people's societies, 
Young Men's Christian Associations, Young 
Women's Christian Associations, Laymen's Mis- 
sionary Movements, Missionary Education Move- 
ments, and other representative or federated or- 
ders for the aggressive prosecution of some spe- 
cial phase of Christian work. 

But even these great organizations, effective as 
they are in their selected fields, do not entirely 
stem the tide. The majority of the Church may be 
indolent and ignorant, but the minority is not, 
and it is demanding not merely that the Church be 
iemocratic, but that it also become a more effective 
democratizing force, in the community, the city, 
the state, the nation, the world. The desire of the 
minority for more direct action persists; the de- 
sire has been immeasurably stimulated by the 
events of the last five years. 

The most promising new agency which has ap- 
peared to take up this insistent task which the 
European War has revealed is the Interchurch 
World Movement of North America. It does not 
seek church union, nor does it operate to restrict 
the liberty of any believer or any denomination. 
But it does pffer to every church and every 
Christian, while retaining his precious ideal of 
liberty, a world vision, a world-wide purpose and 
a program of definite action looking toward the 
cure of those ills of the world which are now 
especially conspicuous. 

The Interchurch World Movement began, in a 



THE NEW PATEIOTISM 165 

business-like way, not with exhortation but with 
a careful survey of the present resources of or- 
ganized Christianity both in America and abroad, 
as well as with a measurement of the need. It 
asks of American Protestantism, ^^What do we 
have? What do we need? How can the Church 
become a more effective, aggressive instrument in 
the Christianizing of the social order, the national 
order and the world-wide order ? ' ' 

No movement of equal breadth and depth has 
ever before been proposed. None, in the light of 
the present bewilderment, confusion and ani- 
mosity of the world, is more timely. The plan 
meets exactly the crucial needs of an ignorant, 
indolent, divided Church. It also offers an op- 
portunity of adequate service to those who are 
so impatient that the Church become a more 
active force for Christian democracy. 

V 

A NEW GOSPEL FOE A NEW AGE 

But the indolence of the Christian Church, as 
we well know, is not due merely to ignorance and 
division. Nor is it due to its great mass. Every 
age has, to a large extent, selected its own Gospel. 
No age has ever taken the entire Gospel as the 
object of its faith and practice. The modem age 
has been particularly neglectful of that part of 
the teachings of Jesus which deal with the rela- 
tion of property to life. It has been equally un- 



166 A BETTER WORLD 

mindful of the social obligations of liberty. We 
thought the great War had brought a moral 
awakening in which the true relation of property 
to life and the true relation of men to men had 
been discovered. The Treaty of Peace has been 
a rude awakening, for in it property is frequently 
elevated above life, and selfishness is crowned 
again with the sanction of international law. To 
be sure, our government is less responsible for 
this than are some others, but who shall say that 
our cleaner hands are not due more to geographi- 
cal location than to our better hearts. 

We do not have a better, a. more Christian 
treaty, because we do not have a better, a more 
Christian world. We shall not have a better world 
until the Christians of the world return to the 
Gospel of Christ as it relates, not to dogmas or 
polities, but to the obligations of living and the 
relation of property to life. To these truths the 
Peace Treaty is hardly more blind than is the 
public sentiment of the average American com- 
munity. The ^^pork-barreP' legislation of the 
Peace Conference is matched by the ^^pork-barreP' 
spirit of our own ward, or even of our own church. 

We owe to the late Professor Rauschenbusch 
an analysis of what might be called the Law of 
Diminishing Power of the Christian code. He 
pointed out the diminishing application of Chris- 
tian ethics as we pass from the smaller to the 
larger circles of social organization. 

It has become commonplace to assert that 



THE NEW PATEIOTISM 167 

Christianity has never been applied except as a 
personal religion. Those who repeat the asser- 
tion often overlook the fact, which Prof. Rausch- 
enbusch pointed out, that Christianity has been 
applied, very widely applied, as a social code in 
the family. Among Christian peoples the insti- 
tution of the family has been largely, if not com- 
pletely. Christianized. ^^ Blood is thick," we say, 
by which we mean that the family is a social group 
in which each individual tends to find his great- 
est contentment and satisfaction, not by a selfish 
policy of individual aggression at the expense of 
the other members of the family, but in coopera- 
tion with them for the common satisfaction of the 
entire group. The family has largely incorporated 
the ethics of Jesus. 

The school, likewise, has a large degree of the 
Christian purpose, although not so much as the 
family. The school is organized on the basis of 
securing the maximum of benefits for every pupil. 
There is cooperation, and the good which one pupil 
obtains is not at the expense of a competitor. The 
benefit which one has is not a loss to another. The 
neighborhood also is often very much Christian- 
ized. Families join together to seek the common 
good, helping each other, waiving selfish com- 
pensations to be obtained at the expense of the 
group. But already we see the effect of this law 
of diminishing power. The neighborhood does not 
possess a Christian spirit so strong as that of 
the home. The village or the city shows even 



168 A BETTEE WOELD 

less of the spirit of cooperation, of common ef- 
fort for the common good, but they in turn usually 
sustain a higher social conscience than the state, 
considered as a unit, or the nation. The larger 
the group, the lower the average of application 
of the Christian doctrine of living to enhance life 
rather than to make a profit out of it. 

It has usually been assumed, and the facts of 
the world have seemed to justify the assumption, 
that patriotism, the love of country, is the abso- 
lute maximum application of Christian ethics. To 
place any love above that, as civic love is placed 
above neighborhood love, and civic love is in turn 
crowned by love of nation, is to pass over into the 
category of the polygamists who possess two 
wives and attempt to love them equally. The 
fallacy of the comparison is obvious, but to point 
it out is not to clear up the confusion in many 
minds. How can patriotism be related to inter- 
nationalism in such a way that one does not be- 
come liable under the laws of treason? Who will 
draft for us a new philosophy of patriotism, in 
which love of country finds its proper place in 
that larger circle of love for the human brother- 
hood? 

The European War, like all wars, has greatly 
stimulated love of country; it has also aroused a 
deal of hatred of other nations. The war has even 
identified hatred of other nations with love of 
one^s nation, and this hatred, unhappily we have 
to admit, has even been preached with smug sane- 



THE NEW PATRIOTISM 169 

timoniousness from Christian pulpits. Public 
opinion has been poisoned and it has been more 
often bewildered. What are the limits of pa- 
triotism? Has patriotism any limits at all? What 
is its relation to the Kingdom of God, to a re- 
generated, world-wide society? 

*^The new religion of the world is patriotism," 
said a Jewish professor in a Spanish university 
to me with a smile, several months before the 
Treaty was signed, when I asked him about re- 
ligious conditions in Spain. **The new faith has 
the good as well as the bad qualities of the old. 
It gathers all sorts of people together, gives them 
unity of purpose, and stimulates them to defend 
their homes and their culture. It also brings out 
their peculiarities and causes many needless irri- 
tations.'' 

**I have great confidence, however," he said, 
'*that the United States will correct this shallow 
patriotism. The moral example of America's en- 
trance into the war has been tremendous. The 
intervention of the United States saved the moral- 
ity of the world. Before the American interven- 
tion there was grave danger that even though the 
Allies might win, they would win at the expense 
of liberty and justice. The reactionary forces of 
the Allied nations were gaining the ascendency. 
For a time it looked as though an Allied victory 
would be merely a victory for Allied junkerism 
and imperialism. As soon as the United States 
entered the war, the very purposes for which the 



170 A BETTEE WOELD 

war was being waged were changed. Immedi- 
ately the idea of revenge and the total destruction 
of Germany began to disappear. Never before in 
the history of the world did armies behave in con- 
quered territory as the Allied armies are now con- 
ducting themselves in Germany. Clemenceau, 
Lloyd George and Wilson made a great trinity; 
one for revenge, another for justice, and the third 
for clemency." 

A Spanish journalist put it this way: ** Spain 
wrote *Don Quixote;' but it remained for the 
United States to put its principles into practice.'' 
The neutral nations of Europe found it impossible 
to believe that the United States would enter the 
war. It was evident to them that America had 
only to remain neutral, supply the warring nations 
with the instruments of destruction, stand by and 
see them destroy each other and then become the 
greatest power in the world. The spectacle of 
such a great nation throwing away its selfish 
advantages for the sake of a principle has been 
to the world one of the moral compensations of 
the cataclysm. 

Nevertheless we cannot blink the fact that the 
United States also entered the war in self-defense. 
If the Allies had been defeated our turn would 
have been next. In self -protection we were com- 
pelled to fight for the restoration of an even mod- 
erately moral order among the Christian nations. 
The resulting victory has brought us even some 
advances in international moral law, but the most 



THE NEW PATRIOTISM 171 

important gift wMoli it has bestowed on the 
United States is a comprehension of the fact that 
America can no longer be isolated. We are our- 
selves a part of the international moral order. 
This order is not yet perfect. The new law con- 
tains injustices and possibilities of trouble almost 
equal to those of the old. The same law of self- 
defense which compelled us to fight for even the 
modest victory we have obtained, likewise com- 
pels us to fight, peacefully, we believe, to lift that 
law to a still higher level. 

VI 

THE INESCAPABLE PATH TO PEACE 

The war was the great demonstration of the 
integrity of the moral order of the universe. Now 
we know that there is a moral order. We know it 
by ten million graves and ten million broken 
homes, by veral times ten million starving peo- 
ple and by dying boys and girls. The moral law 
of the universe is Christian brotherhood. That 
law, and it alone, is humanity's defense, its first 
trench and its last one. 

It is not discreditable that the United States 
went to war in self-defense. Her self-defense is 
the same as that of every other nation and race, if 
they did but know it, the law of human brother- 
hood. We fought for love of men; we fought in 
fear of the penalty which would come upon us if 
the moral order were defeated. We fought as 



172 A BETTER WOELD 

every man mnst live from day to day, in love of 
brothers and in fear of God. 

In the realization of this integrity of life in- 
dolence disappears, just as it disappeared so uni- 
versally throughout the nation for a full year and 
one-half. There was no indolence in the American 
army in France, or in the camps at home. Rather 
there was impatience that the opportunities for 
giving were so reluctantly extended. Nor was 
there indolence in the homes from which the sol- 
diers came. There was **war work," there was 
incredible generosity, there was voluntary re- 
striction of gasoline, of fuel, even of food. The 
nation was no longer ignorant, no longer dis- 
united, no longer indolent. In that great period 
we caught the vision of human brotherhood, the 
very vision for the lack of which a Christ was 
crucified. 

This is the new patriotism in which love of 
home, of city, state and nation finds its fulfill- 
ment — ^love of the Christian brotherhood, nation 
deep and world wide. To die for one is to die for 
all ; to live for one is to live for the others. 

You and I are not the units, self-sufficient, self- 
defending; we are but parts of the unit — the 
brotherhood. We were born into the world as 
individualists, assuming that we were, each one 
of us, the all important desire in the universe. 
The primitive impulse, which still persists in in- 
dividuals, in nations, is to take the most direct 



THE NEW PATRIOTISM 173 

road to the satisfaction of our desires, even when 
that road leads through a country not our own. 

We were bom individualists ; we must be bom 
again, both men and nations, born into the world 
of social obligation and responsibility. In the 
making of this discovery of the inescapable Gos- 
pel of Jesus Christ lies the hope of peace for the 
world. 



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